In mid-December, you were implying that we might be relegated.
By mid-February, without having torn up any trees (in the meantime our results have included our heaviest home defeat of the century) we are in a position whereby we could lose all of our remaining 14 games and comfortably stay up.
Right, if we had lost to Crewe, then lost again to Crewe, etc etc, we might be near the bottom of the table. But instead, to give your example, we were 3 up in 20 minutes at Gresty Road. Why’s that then? Because, even without our new signings, we were a substantially better team than them.
Which is why any rational person could always take it as a given that we were going to finish much, much higher up the table.
Paying heed to below us doesn't imply relegation but rather a need to avoid a season of struggle... so for example around that time we'd just lost to Grimsby which brought them up to a couple of points below us. They've struggled since... sacked Slade and are 9 points off the drop zone... but played 2 more games then others.