[yyyfb]

> The developers might be great, you might find you need to get rid of management dead wood.

In my experience great developers do not stick with mediocre managers, because they quickly find better options. My experience with poor managers is that they are only able to retain middling engineers.

> Or it might be that you get a very nimble team who in all likelihood have been itching to fix bugs for years and yet who haven't been able to due to competing interests in the business.

That would be closer to a win scenario, but I think OP would have had a strong feel about it - from the way they describe there interactions, it doesn't seem to be the case?