The fact that Gillet, Mills, Thomas etc.. have all done ok in the Championship since leaving us just reinforces the point that others have made; much of the Championship is ****e and there are very few players as good as KD, Fonte, Schneiderlin (potentially), Lallana, Chamberlain, Guly...
Remember when our team included Perry, Lancashire, Surman at LB, James at RB, Thomson, McGoldrick, Gillet, Holmes... even that lot didn't get relegated until near the end of the season and they weren't exactly given the best environment to play in.
Predicting bottom half is just silly. We will want to do better than that, we have a settled and happy team, we will probably invest, we will have some of the most talented players in the division.