They thought that they'd never see us in the PL again after our back to back demotions.
They declared we had found our level and would be forever floundering while they, having being took over by the most theocratic and despotic regime on the planet and now "tha reechest klerb in tha werld", were about to go on and conquer the whole of Yewrop.
They, League Cup winners, were cockahoop when we won the play off final as we were going to be their whipping boys.
They, having spent nearly £750m, qualified for Champions League and won their first trophy in 70+yrs, were chomping at the bit to destroy the newly promoted upstarts. The prophecies came thick and fast. 6 easy points, down by Xmas, worst points ever, team full of foreigners nee ones heard of.
Fortunately we had not got the memo and decided not to be the whipping boys. Actual results on the pitch meant that we were ABOVE them in the league, somewhere we stayed for almost the duration of the entire season. But of course we'd played no one by this point.
Then December hit. Their super squad were humbled and their record signing gifted us the points. Another Christmas ruined for them. This wasn't supposed to happen but AFCON was going to put things right and come 22nd March they'd be relegating us from the PL in front of a packed Sid James.
Except that didn't happen either as Big Brian accepted Enzo's exquisite double meg to put them to the sword and get a little justice for the racist abuse Gerty had suffered.
They've been chasing us almost the entire season bar a couple of weeks where they went above us. We've out fought them, out thought them and all done with a team spirit they can only dream of.
Beating them once at home would have been amazing to think at the start of the season. But we did it twice and even their best players bottled wanting to play in the games.
We finished above them not just a little but 5pts and 5 places.
And finally, the rusty stake into their black hearts, we've qualified for Europe, the Europa League as well, so even higher than most of us were thinking in the last few days of the season.
It's no surprise that they're clutching at any straws to try and find something positive. There's very little posotive about their season so they've reverted to type re-writing history to suit their narrative and try to belittle us.
Sadly it doesn't change the fact we only needed 1 season back to catch up. The orcs will be very restless this long, hot summer.