I've been going round in circles thinking that on the one hand Harry should stay, but on the other he should go.
On the stay side, Harry has proven he can build a team and integrate signings quickly. He will get proven players, keep it relatively simple and hopefully keep disruption to a minimum. If we have to let one/both of Modric and Bale go I'm sure Harry would use the cash fairly wisely and replace them. Since we need to keep disruption low this summer in what is sure to be full of upheaval, Harry might be the best man to do it. Could we afford to let someone with totally new ideas come in, risk going even further backwards and taking longer to come back up?
On the go side, the collapse in form for the second season in a row has been heartbreaking this time. Maybe the players and the club need a new voice to give a renewed sense of purpose and motivation rather than listening to the same one that represents the collapse of the previous year. There is also the argument that we were are going to sell our key players and will need to rebuild the team, in which case it may be better to give the money to a new guy rather than give it to Harry who will likely leave after one year.
Maybe in our position we need someone with a bit more tactical flexibility rather than someone who in effect shrugs his shoulders and literally says 'we couldn't have done any more' when we were so close to third and had it well within our own hands. We were unlucky with bad calls, deflected goals and gifts for other teams around us but at the end of the day Harry felt that even from the position we were in that 4th was good enough. Someone like Martinez, who absolutely refused to believe that Wigan were going to get relegated, and worked his gonads off to find a new system to get results to improve, while having the absolute confidence in the club to say 'we are playing too well to get relegated' sounds like the kind of mentality we would need to over-perform ourselves, rather than accept the slide from certain 3rd place to scraping into 4th on the last day. Martinez wouldn't be perfect, and it would be a risk to sack someone who has gotten us 4th, 5th and 4th, but in terms of psychology of the club, giving us a new vision and renewing our sense of purpose and vigour, it may be best to hear someone else. I fear that otherwise we may suffer what teams that finish 3rd in the football league and then fail in the play offs go through, where they are so close to something they worked for so long to acheive and then can't shake the dissapointment. The confidence could take a while to return unless we have someone else at the head of the ship.
At the end of the day, whatever happens it's going to be between us, Arsenal, Liverpool, Saudi Sportswashing Machine and potentially Everton next season for 4th. Arsenal and Liverpool especially will spend money and we need to keep up with them. Man United, City and Chelsea will spend far beyond what we are capable of and have squads that we won't be able to get near unfortunately. So we need to look at our squad and see if:
Goalkeepers: Friedel, Cudicini
Defenders: Walker, Naughton, Caulker, Kaboul, Dawson, Assou-Ekotto
Midfield: Lennon, Sandro, Huddlestone, Parker
Forwards: Van Der Vaart.
...can be improved to compete with our closest competitors. I've put the worst case scenario there of selling Bale and Modric but on the plus side it will give us more money to spend to actually rebuild. Is Harry the best guy to do this or would someone like Rodgers or Martinez be better served going for it? That squad needs a centre back, a back up left back, a squad right winger, a central midfielder, 2 left sided options, and 3 forwards to have 2 good players in each position and therefore giving us enough cover to compete for the top 4. That's 9 players. If we sell Modric, Bale, Defoe, Dos Santos, Krancjar, Pienaar, Rose, and release Saha and Nelsen we should have the best part of ?ú100 million to spend and rebuilding. That's well over ?ú10 million per player that we need. Some may cost ?ú15M, some may cost ?ú5M, but that should be roughly enough to do it.
Part of me says Harry will be the right man to acclimatise all the new players we need to implement into the squad as quickly as possible, but another part says a new younger manager with a defined system would be better served taking that money and getting the exact players he needs to make it work. Maybe AVB joining Spurs would be a good match. Two entities that have suffered massive dissapointments at the hands of Chelsea, both have been knocked down and their reputations have suffered. Both have a point to prove.