Never forget where they were before Simeone
In my opinion, this is a shit excuse. Atletico spends like an elite club, they have ambitions like an elite club to win all competitions, so they have to rate their coach based on that and not based on history 15 years ago.
I have a good example for this:
The club in my German hometown, Hannover 96, played in the third division when Martin Kind took over as president. Under his leadership, they reached the first Bundesliga, even the EL placements for 2 years. I remember Atletico coming to Hannover playing an EL match and how exciting this was. After that, they started to suck again, got relegated into the second Bundesliga and now sit there since 10 fucking years without any chances so far to return back to the Bundesliga, all under the leadership of Martin Kind.
And yet, there are still people out there, who support him by telling the club was in a worse position in the third division before him 2 decades ago, so he should continue.
With this logic, you can't ever change someone's position, as long as you don't hit a lower situation than you had when said person took over? It's ridiculous. With success the ambitions change. History only matters in a museum, not in the day-to-day business.
But why should I argue for Atletico to change their coach. I hope Simeone will stay and beat even Ferguson's record at United. Then we'll only have to watch out for Atleti in LaLiga once every 5 years.