Oh dear, the struggle to get the point across without being unnecessarily insulting.

If one has generically the right to object to an inferior performer then those who wish to object to one have a similar right.

If one believes that one will never be subject to such an objection then one has a view about one's own standard, and that it is not inferior.

When I was at university I played a bit of squash. I was chatting to another student in the coffee queue one day and it turned out he played. He said "I'm not bad actually" to decline the game. I thought what a conceited fellow he must be (since I was in fact playing number 3 or 4 most weeks on the university team that year). It turned out he was rated number 2 or 3 in the country UAU rankings. So in fact he was being properly self-effacing by saying that he was not bad.

Does that put it in context without being short?