+1 on William Powell's sentiments. The 'we haven't beaten a side above us' chant to me is dumbfounding. Because the more games you win, the fewer number of teams above you and the pool of teams below you increases?
As mentioned, the better metric is beating a team which made finals last year. Which we did well with toppling the Eagles and Crows. Collingwood, Essendon (although they didn't make finals), and North Melbourne were horrible efforts I would concede, Geelong we only really started copping a belting when Vickery was involved with a head clash, and Freo well we all know how that ended.
Yes we aren't a top 4 but I think we have earned our spot in the bottom 4 of the top 8