Budgetary restrictions is obviously the primary reason, there's no denying that. However, to blame that many players departing on the budget and ignore all other variables is slightly naive in my opinion.
Putting budgetary restrictions aside, I'm more interested in focusing on the timing - i.e. when the contracts were put on the table. If they were literally left to the expiry date of the players' contracts then why is this? Hence why it's of my opinion that the constant changes at both board and managerial level in part contributed to their release. Yes it's tricky to offers contracts when the budget for the following year is unknown, but similarly it's tricky to offer contracts when you have no idea who the next manager is going to be, or who is going to sign off on said contracts. I don't know the full details so like I said it's just a thought. I personally just find it hard to believe the reason that all those players we let go for free was purely budgetary, when it actually would've been in the financial interest of the club in the long term to hang on to players such as Westwood, Gunnarsson etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though isn't it!
