Making us underdog/message to the board/taking pressure off the players, who knows. Its better than being over confident in public. In private I suspect that's not what he is telling the players.
But he certainly seems to be trying out the "if you tell people often enough they will start to believe you" approach
That's a sales and political approach, to hammer home your point and gain leverage in an argument or sales negotiation. It is his default position. He knows better than us the current runners and riders in league one. He would have done early on in the season a SWAT analysis of everyone and constantly updated their files. I would say say he is optimistically confident where as last season he fucking knew we were going up. Just playing down the situation in case. Other than that start saving for a season ticket in the championship!
