Dead serious.
Do you realise that the 4th placed team in Italy will have to face a team coming from one of the other big leagues? With a bit of bad luck (English team, Spanish team, German team), we won't even have a 50% chance.
What Neutrol said. 4th position means a qualifier, against another team coming from a strong competition. So that's still only about a 50% chance of getting in the CL.
Difficult question to answer right now. If we get our act together, I do see us staying ahead of / overtaking Lazio, Udinese & Palermo. But then we would still need Napoli to screw up, and I am far from certain of that happening.