The problem with comparisons like this, and the ones we all make with the squads in the 70's/80's/90's, is that you can't just compare our squad with the current squad and say that Redknap, Jol etc worked wonders with those players to finish 5th, 8th or even 11th. You have to compare our squad then with other teams then, and actually compare that with our squad now and other teams now. The likes of Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd and even Woolwich have spent large fortunes on building squads that are larger, more experienced and generally better than ours. The other teams should expect to be above us in the league and win trophies ahead of us because put simply, whatever measure you use they should be much better than us. So yes we are 'punching above our weight' to finish in the top 4,and have been for a few years now. Now do a similar comparison with that team 'that went to Milan and won'. It may or may not have been as strong as some other teams (Woolwich and Man Utd maybe were better, possibly Chelsea who were of course the big spenders of the era) but it was arguably at least as good as the rest, so why then weren't we finishing 3rd or 4th regularly? Or winning trophies?
The fact is that unfortunately without spending the GDP of a small country (or in City's case a large country) 'success' by winning things ahead of City/Liverpool/Utd/Chelsea/Woolwich should be almost impossible these days, whereas in previous eras the difference was never great enough to be a major barrier. Football is finished as a competitive sport - its now all about competitive spending and we will never get to the top of that league.
Sorry - a long way of saying that I don't think that comparing squads from years gone by is quite as simple as looking at OUR players in isolation.
And for the record, I think that Poch has taken us as far as he can and this needs to be his last season. He seems to be a manager who has fantastic ability in building a relatively low cost squad and improving players within that squad, but lacks the ability both tactically and from a coaching perspective to build a true winning squad (although money would help of course). I can now understand why he commented as he did before the ECL final - in my view (using hindsight) that would have been the ideal time for him to leave and pass on his legacy to a 'winning' manager.
