Yes Slade had to off load players & he certainly used this to cover up his inadequacies. What he failed to talk much about though was the fact that he was also given a fair amount of flexibility to bring in his own players, although sadly most were very poor signings & I think it is fair to say that he wasted a lot of the money provided to him e.g. we were covering premier league wages & a loan fee for Ameobi & the same applies to Lawrence. He wasted fees on Doyle (£750k) & Revell (£175k) plus I suspect that they were both on decent money. He signed a lot of players during his tenure & in my view very few can be considered good signings.
To compare Slade with Warnock at this stage is unfair until Warnock has the ability in January to fix what he has inherited. Also you suggest that Warnock will be given more support than Slade although Warnock has gone on record to state that he will need to sell in order to balance the books.