The club worked so hard on rebuilding a spirited dressing room since relegation, and the positive vibe was largely built by Smith and even a certain degree by Kebab Steve. I might be going towards the conspiracy territory, but the VP dressing room doesn't seems to have that positive vibe anymore, with Mings being "injured" and "ill", Bailey wanting to leave, and generally players turning to shits " ie the Konsa". Then we now have Gerrard blaming the players after every single defeat, instead of a coherent discussion amongs staff and players of what went wrong and how to rectify. Even at Smith's final hours it still felt the dressing room was there abeit with low confidence, but there was a "team" there trying to work things out together. What also strikes me in particular against Bolton (yes a L1 team), it was the coaching staff, or at least I saw 3 of them continuously passing through info to SG as if they know SG couldn't really see things on the pitch, like a North Korean dictator with 3 of his commanders.
The only positive thing is that it's an easy fix, just get rid of the cancer. Shame it might be too late and the nucleus of this team is already broken by the time for the new person to fix.