Harry Redknapp has blasted the Queens Park Rangers squad he inherited last season - insisting not even Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho could have kept them in the Premier League.
QPR sit second in the Championship on goal difference after a fine start, but for Redknapp the memories of a torrid top-flight campaign have still not been banished.
Redknapp stepped into the breach after Mark Hughes was sacked in November having failed to win a single game in the opening months on the season.
And now Redknapp has lifted the lid on the full extent of the problems that plagued QPR in his autobiography, being serialised in the Daily Mail, taking aim at the "disgraceful" attitude among his players and the "naive" owners who brought them to the club.
"Jose Mourinho would not have kept QPR up last season," said Redknapp. "The squad I inherited was poorly balanced, undisciplined and short of confidence.
"The directors and owners were nice people but they were naive in football terms. Certain people they had trusted - agents and advisers - had let them down quite badly. They had probably never been around players, or indeed football before, did not know the market and had spent unwisely on some very average foreign imports.
"They had players on astronomical wages, being watched by crowds of 18,000 at Loftus Road. It wasn't sustainable; it wasn't right. I found out the extent of the problem after we beat Fulham and Jose Bosingwa refused to sit on the subs bench. I'd had problem players in the past but I thought his attitude was disgraceful.
"I fined him two weeks' wages - I got the shock of my life when I found out how much he was on. He wasn't the only one. It was scary. Within weeks I had worked out that my best player was Ryan Nelsen, a 35-year-old New Zealand international - and he couldn't wait to get out.
"'You've got no chance,' he told me. 'Not a prayer. This is the worst dressing room I've ever been in in my life. You haven't got a hope with this lot. I don't know how you solve it.'
"The attitude stank. Attitude towards the game, attitude towards training. I can't remember a worse one - and behaviour like that cannot be altered overnight. They had was a squad full of very average footballers earning more money than they deserved.
"It made them very arrogant and contemptuous. They would rather come in late every day and just pay the fine than behave in a professional manner. Getting them in was daily aggravation. There were players who were late three, sometimes four times each week - and the most we ever trained was five days! There was always an excuse."

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