I think grey bull bought the company with the sole intent to turn it into a more valuable entity to sell (obvious but bare with me) - I'm personally not sure they ever had the intention of turning the airline/brand into the next big thing or even to make it a steadily profitable airline (although if they stumbled upon this in the process they'd of sure been delighted!).
Looking at the rumours in the news during the past few days, I would speculate that they want to revert their 'holiday' business to long haul using leased 330s in the very near future, whilst going ahead with their fleet replacement of short haul aircraft to the 73s with the eventual intent of selling the business to Jet2 who are basically doing exactly the same thing.
Monarchs value comes from its slots and infrastructure in the south (something that Jet2 lacks but is steadily and successfully growing), and a few years down the line, buying Monarch may be a no brainer for Jet2s full expansion into the south - even if they have to trim the company down slightly in regards to bases. MON moving into long haul is probably just an idea spawned by consultants as they just want to create a more attractive proposition to perspective buyers.... "45 shiny 737s to slot into your fleet, valuable slots and a nice long haul holiday business thats flexible due to wet leasing!"
Like a lot of consultancy based strategies its probably fairly disconnected with what occurs in practice.
As for potential 'airline partnerships' mentioned in the news, I really don't get this; Easy will never partner, they've already done it with Norwegian and have no reason to bother with old airbus from MON, they're in the process of bringing in their NEOs. RYR - well, ha! Thomson, Thomas Cook would never happen.
Jet2 seem the obvious again, but they are managing a very successful and profitable expansion. A partnership would presumably offer pax the opportunity to book with either company and utilise each others base networks, working together - however Jet2 has carefully managed their holiday brand and surely wouldn't want it diluted by confusing customers with a mixed product offering