You can't just make up your criteria and say that it is how the club see it and some other posters is not. You don't actually know any better than GC or anyone else what the club's criteria is.
We can debate what we think it should be which is another matter again. For mine, given the recruiting, we look to be aiming to play finals and I would expect not playing finals would be seen as failure internally unless there are extenuating circumstances like a big injury list. I'm not confident we will measure up to that but we are in the mix.
As for evidence of the clubs take on it, there isn't much other than the list structuring via trades and comments from Buckley about how much better placed we are than last year. Based on prior comments about ladder expectations from the CEO I'd think it much more likely the clubs thinks we should play finals in 2016.
As you have said though, none of it will change the fact that Buckley will be coaching Collingwood in 2017 (and 2018 for that matter).
