There was an opportunity very much missed and a solid team seemed, to me at least, to be allowed to break up. There may well have been little that could have been done realistically to keep a lot of them but you just always have that impression AFC are not particularly hard to negotiate with.
Milne was full of bullshit in the wake of that wee glint of "success". Successive seasons saw managers have to contend with losing their best players and not even getting the departing players wages to replace them, until it has reached the point where no-one would really worry about any member of the squad leaving anymore.