A big reason is that if they had come out and said that they would have looked like they were trying to discredit Cortese and would have looked like idiots themselves. Cortese had the majority of fans, media and pundits wrapped around his finger quite rightly because if he said something it happened (or at least seemed to) and had the midas touch. The fact that it looks like in the long term his strategies were close to hitting a brick wall in terms of the FFP wage ceiling limiting our progress was not really something they could use against him because we hadn't reached that point yet and who's to say what Cortese would have done once that point was reached. From that RedSlo article on FFP even if you don't believe the strategy he is talking about you have to agree that for us to hold on to our key players we would have had to offered improved contracts and that would have meant we would likely have reached that ceiling this season or next. When you figure in Osvaldo's and Lallana's wages come to circa £6m a year then that £52m ceiling doesn't allow for that many top players if you want to have any squad depth at all. What would Cortese have done? So my opinion is that they tried to continue and change things without making any major noises r.e. The Cortese era whilst trying to move things forward without disparaging the past. Went tits up but then it was a dodgy situation. I am pretty sure Koeman knows that he was going to be doing a mjor rebuilding job and I am pretty certain that the remarks r.e. 'not saying anyone was for sale' is p.r. speak for 'We didn't advertise it but as long as the right offers came in we were always going to sell'.
