Damo. Leaving aside your Scally Good/evil arguments, I do find your financial analysis absurd. i reckon last year was the "golden" one in financial terms since 2000. Not only did we have the windfall from the Gazzanigga transfer (£2M suggested) but also the sell on fee for Jarvis and the milestone fee for Bertrand. Add to that the financial relief with the departure of the big earners from Dimson's era who had been such a burden for Hessy (Oli, Fuller, Weston,King, Richards) and you had the best financial position in memory.
So what happened? MA blew the lot dishing out Long contracts to players in their twilight, ditching low cost youngsters like Essam and paying high salaries to poor performers. What was left in the kitty was then blown in a most wasteful way with the spent force of Akinfenwa, the questionable wisdom of Macdonald and the amazingly irresonsible purchase of Linganzi whose troublesome hamstrings have allowed him less than 30 games in 5 seasons. It was not surprising MA upset Scally, it was the squandering of money that caused the upset not the league position.