Personally, I'll admit that Serie-A is weaker than a couple of the other european leagues any day of the week, because it's true. My agenda, however, is to try to make people realize that it's not as far behind as some make it out to be. It's not lightyears behind the EPL or anything of the sort. Deep down I believe that's what Zacheryah means as well. He'll have to confirm that, though.
Napoli did get 12 points in this season's CL group stage, a very impressive tally that normally would see you go through to the knockout stages. They were unlucky, no doubt about it.
As for us, we did not live up to our potential. We are definitely better than crashing out of the group we were eliminated from, but sometimes these things happen. We had a run of bad form.
Looking at this year's Europa League, Tottenham, a club that I've seen members here say that would finish above us if Juventus played in the EPL, got eliminated 5-3 on aggregate by Benfica, a team from Portugal, a league that's considered to be worse than Serie-A (and rightly so).
Looking at this year's Champions League, Manchester United and Arsenal did nothing impressive. Chelsea, however, are having a fine run, and like I said: the EPL is better, I will agree to that all the time, but don't make it out to be so much greater than it in reality is.
Another thing about Serie-A. Sure, the Milanese clubs aren't at their best anymore, but player by player, they do have some very good players in their squad. When teams like Atalanta and Hellas Verona and Bologna etc. can beat them, maybe that also speaks volumes about some of these smaller clubs in Serie-A? Maybe they're not all such walkovers as they're currently made out to be.
We beat most other teams in this league more often than not, but it's because we have a fantastic coach, a great squad consisting of several world class players, and great experience at being at the top.