My belief (and it is only that) is that Nicola had not done anything wildly irresponsible with the finances, helped by the fact that we kept getting promoted and stayed up. He left once it became clear that the owner wasn't prepared to keep subbing a business she had inherited. It's right to say that many clubs run at a massive deficit. I think the only way to make a rapid assault on the top places was to abandon prudent spending and go large, which wasn't the idea as sold to Markus in the first place.
Whilst the facts displayed here are true and cannot be denied the speculation doesn't really fit. If Nicola left when 'it became clear the owner wasn't prepared to keep subbing a business she inherited' then he would have left anyway. If KL had subbed us more we would have hit that preverbial brick wall. If Nicola left because he knew he needed to boost the wages of Shaw, Lallana, Lovren, Morgan, Chambers + others to have any chance of keeping them then we would have hit the FFP wall early enough and that would be without adding any more to the squad.
TBH the 'clause' speculation seems much more likely to me simply in the way that the Chambers deal happened in a flash. If Arsenal offered £12m+add-ons and there was no clause met then we would have not accepted that first offer and it would have dragged on. Because it happened in a flash says to me that it was pretty much a case of buying at the price tag and there is nothing to haggle about.
I really don't get this 'if Nicola was still here so would the players'. I think Pochettino may have been more likely to but I don't think any of these players would have stayed when it comes down to statements of showing ambition whilst also wanting more money. What would they have done when they all got offered new improved contracts to stay this summer to keep them sweet and then were told 'Sorry we are at our limit now so can't improve the squad'?
They would have gone at that point anyway. Many saying we were nowhere near FFP. With or without Cortese for those players who have just left to stay they would have needed another round of improved contracts. Morgan will probably get one soon just to keep him sweet till the summer. Players like Shaw and Chambers may well have been on relative peanuts wages but that would definitely have had to be changed this season. We could easily be facing much more than the difference between what we were paying and the FFP limit just in salary increases. Say we were paying Shaw £25k and to keep him would have to put him up to £60k. That would be nearly £2m just to keep a player. I bet Chambers was on even less.
We have to face the facts that even with Cortese at the helm, even if he had not promised these players that they could leave this summer, even if there were no clauses letting them go, he would not have been able to keep them here this summer because doing so would have left us unable to improve the squad and possibly have had to reduce the squad numbers to make it under that limit.
When you see that you can only afford 18 players @ £60k a week to stay under that limit it means that clubs like West Ham must have very small squads or a massive differential between the Carrolls & Nolans and their substitutes or they must be giving up on staying under that limit or already qualify to have more than that limit.
