OP said:
Flowers
Dodd
Adams
Hall
Monkou
LeTissier
Hurlock
team.
Well I'll be even more controversial and say that Le Tissier probably wouldn't make it into a modern day side. Like I stated earlier, in the eighties and nineties he could make a huge impact on the game but football has changed. Teams do have flair players nowadays but they afford no passengers. Everyone has to put a shift in now. He was the best in the world at his time but I'm not sure many modern Prem teams would be able to make up for the other 88 minutes.
As for Hurlock getting in this team, that is laughable.You could argue for Case because he wa twice the player Hurlock was however as stated earlier they are both a liability in the modern non contact game. Their game was as much about their reputation/presence scaring the opoosition as it was perfectly timed tackles.
I think you could argue that Mickey Adams might get into the team as he was quite a cultured full back but Jason Dodd as much as we love him was only marginally better than Benali (who we also love.) Both would do anything for the team but they were your average meat and drink full back. Benali and Dodd would not make a modern team. they were in effect solely defence.
In that early era we relied solely on MLT to make attacks and score goals with our back 4 + defensive midfielder hardly moving from their stations. Was a good job that we did have solid centre back pairings because without that we would have been down in the early nineties and under the old regime would have struggle to get back up.
So I am sort of agreeing with you as do many others that what we lack is a good solid CB pairing and maybe a defensive midfielder in front of them (if Cork doesn't make the grade) however I think the rest of the team is pretty good. Our first 3 full backs IMO are: Clyne, Richardson, Shaw. We have backup in Fox and we are light on backup but CLyne would get into a lot of Prem sides' first teams. Shaw undoubtedly will be the same.
Lets se how much Cortese backs Nigel with in January. If he gives him 10m to get 2 centre backs then I think you'll know if Cortese is likely to remove him or not. I do think Adkins will be here for the transfer window. I may be wrong but like yousay. I am entitled to that opinion and far from being as you say, I am probably in theminority on that belief no matter how positive many of us are abou the situation.