No **** way would we have been flirting with relegation if MON has stayed. Not a chance. He may have left in part to save his CV, but whilst we may have gone backwards, I very much doubt we'd have even dropped out of the top half.
I wouldnt be surprised if we had this under MON, wasn't it Warnock, Friedel, NRC, L.Young,Cuellar and then the layabouts like Beye, Davies and Sidwell
who were said to not want to ever play for MON again? I forget who said it now I think it was MM a few weeks back that a load of player (I think it was those above) who didnt want to play for MON again.
And even though this was the case and that players hated him, he still refused to lower the wage bill and move on the ageing players and overpaid reserves. We had to lower the wage bill and we now have.
At the end of the season our wage bill could well be around £45m *almost halved since start of last season *. And while we will have a massive gap in our squad, to be honest its only really the older, overpaid and shit players we will be losing [bar the Youngs and NRC]. We were always going to have to do a major rebuild, just unfortunately its going to have to be done all in one summer.
That doesn't mean Houllier was a great appointment it just means getting rid of MON was a good thing for the club. Yes Houllier has been a bit of a train wreck and we should maybe be looking elsewhere. But we have to ask whether the realistic appointments we could make will just be MON 2.0 or whether they can take us forward further.
(Yes i understand we'd kill to be top 6 right now, but taking on a manager who can only get top 6 again is just pointless, we need somebody who can build us to a top 6 for the next couple of seasons and then start to break the glass ceiling when the big spenders can no longer spend come the 13/14 season.)