FFP could put a stop to this. Clubs like QQR will not be able to buy their way out of trouble like they are attempting to do this year
Will this be the third club that Harry has taken down? Not a very good stat for someone who wants to lift the World Cup for England.
Ancelotti was a decent manager, a nice guy, and respected by the players. He won us the double on his first season and I think he should have been given another, with some money to spend on building his own squad. But don't let history - 1st and 2nd place finish under Carlo - cloud your perspective on things. We finished with a 'meagre' 71 points in his second year, going on the worst run of form in the Abramovich era at the time, in the middle of that. I say meagre, as this was well below our average (in the high-eighties) we had been getting for the last 5 seasons before that. Were it not for the fact that Liverpool were in an even worse bother with FSW leading them to oblivion, Arsenal undergoing another year in transition, and Spurs / City still being works in progress, we would have been well out of the running. Indeed we only beat city to 2nd on goal difference. The fact we finished with 64 points the following season should have come as no surprise really. In my mind the rot started in Carlo's second year during that bleak October-December period BEFORE the Torres signing. We did manage to arrest the decline somewhat but, arguably, AVB had already inherited a squad that was on the downhill. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way an AVB apologiser, but we just need to put criticism of him, and praise for Carlo, into context.
I have to say I agree with much of that. That 2nd place was as much down to the state of others as it was to how 'well' we did. Also Ancelotti was brought into primarily win the C.L and under him we fared relatively poorly i.e only making the quartes once in those 2 attempts. I still think he deserved another season but we had gone backwards in that 2nd year.
