Four words bhaexpress: Jeff. Wood. Martin. Hinslewood.
Booker is the link between players and boss he CANNOT be the boss, he's too pally with them and he won't be able to be a hard nose when he has to. The man does Freddy Mercury impressions for crying out loud. Great for building team spirit, lousy for exercisign authority.
The first thing Alan Mullery did when he took over in 1976 was cancel the contracts of Phil Beal and Joe Kinnear, two players he'd played with at Tottenham. He knew he couldn't manage them having been mates with them.
No doubt I will be saying much the same thing on thread after thread for the next few weeks.