We're not 'pretending' anything, it's just incredibly naive to take what he has said entirely at face value without thinking about how and when we could get there, plus of course what else he could possibly have said instead, and to take it to mean that we will be challenging for the title 12 months later. Even in the bit you've quoted he talks about
foundations, and that hopefully in 12 months' time people will be
talking about us differently - that's a very long way from saying we will be in the title race. As I said in my initial post to you, we have removed pretty much all of the deadwood except Reggie, and that in itself is an incredible achievement that, having been seemingly unachieveable for a couple of years, has suddenly all happened within 8 months! Then when you look at the kind of players we've signed recently, I'd imagine people
are talking about us differently now, people are recognising that having got rid of the deadwood and signed lots of promising youngsters, we are at the start of a new era.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't think Levy has got everything right, and for me the appointments of Jose and Conte (and of course Nuno) were the worst things he's ever done, completely ignoring the attributes of our squad at the time, and the style of football that we've been famous for playing for 100+ years. I get what he was trying to do with Jose and Conte - we'd got so close, now we need winning mentality to get us over the line, what better than a manager who has a history of winning? But it was naive and ignoring our footballing foundations.
It's genuinely different now. We are trying to play exciting football again, all of the old guard is gone, lots of promising new young players have come in, and I'd be amazed if there is any pundit out there who isn't 'talking about us differently', as a team that has finally accepted the end of a sub-optimal era and is at the start of a new era. Now I know some of the doom-mongers on here will say "we've heard it all before", but no we haven't, well not for many years anyway - the future of the squad looks brighter now than it has at any point since Poch. Admittedly it remains to be seen whether Angeball can deliver consistent results, but I'm far more excited to find out than I ever was with any of the other manager appointments since Poch.
Tbh reading this back, then reading
Ionman34
's response to you, I probably should have left it to him, he has articulated how I feel about it all far better than I have above.