This is what I, and many others, say constantly. We'd done all the hard yards and put the club into a position where even underperformance would have been safety in the PL, but success would have been CL football or at least a lot of EL/challenging for cups. Yes, we'd likely have dropped back to the championship at some point, but shouldn't have happened in this time frame, let alone twice and on the cusp of worse.
Probably more depressing is that we actually opened the door for Villa and Newcastle to go on challenge (and secure) the CL places.