In all fairness, the reality is that they are better players than they are currently showing and while it's up to them to raise their game it's also up to the management team to help them deal with the expectation vs reality that you refer to. I don't think the expectation we put on them as fans is too much.
Doing a job they should love must be truly horrific though so my heart goes out to them.
If you, and everyone else, tempers their expectation then effectively you're accepting that we are worse and that's a bad thing, it doesn't put pressure on the team that they require to make them improve, work harder and do better. If we accept it, they accept it and nothing will change and we'll only go one way.