Well the first step is saying what you just did: we are not a top team.
Once you admit that, it makes our team less stressful. When we go thru these down periods, don’t look at Juve and Barca and wonder why they don’t have the down periods. We’re not them, we’re not a top team. We will never truly be a top team. Even when we have won Scudetti, they were isolated (3 spread out since 1927). We will probably win another at some point, but it’ll probably be an isolated occasion in like 20 years. Once you realize this club’s main ambition isn’t to win trophies (realistically) on a semi-annual basis, it makes accepting our failures a lot easier.