Part of the problem is, that top strikers only come with big wage bills on top of their already inflated prices.
I think we can attract the right sort of player, but we have to be prepared to pay the going rate - both in terms of the Fee, and the wages. As I said earlier, it seems to me, that Levy is just not willing to do that. Instead, we keep searching for the virtually non-existent bargains.
I will never understand why we don't just clear out the large amount of dead wood that we have on our books, we have received, reportedly, what I would consider to be, reasonable bids for some of them; and then use that money to pay the going rate for 2-3 top quality players.
Doubt we'd get 2-3 QUALITY players... unless they came at Van der Vaart prices.
Wouldn't expect use to be able to raise more than 35 million from the sales of Hutton, Jenas, Palacios Keane and 1 more striker. That will pay for one quality player - and we still wouldn't be able to meet the wages that the likes of Man City are paying...
What I don't get is that we were bidding big money for strikers (Aguero,Rossi, Llorente & Negredo) on the last day of the transfer window in January so the money must be there.
Or were we only bidding to help secure 4th again and if so and we signed someone for £30million and still finished 5th would we have been in the deep stuff?
I can't Levy operating the club like that so I assume we have a large amount of cash set aside for NEW STRIKER.

PSB - Pointy Shouty Bloke, also known as Notso, also known as Robbie 'can score for my country but not for my club' Keane
Firstly, I'm assuming that we already have the money to pay for one top player. Secondly, there are one or two more candidates that I would add to your list - Bentley, for starters.
Last of all, when you lose the player, you also lose their wage bill. Which would enable us to pay higher wages to fewer players.
Ah yes, Bentley - i'd forgotten about him for one blissful minute...
I was actually taking into account the freed up wage bill that we would have for selling these players - it would take about 5 of our players to equal the wages of Aguero (reportedly £200,000 p/w) or Yaya Toure (£185,000). This is all hypothetical of course as I don't believe the club would break the structure for the sake of one player - quite rightly in my opinion, can you imagine the squad unrest it would cause. ( http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/footba...ntract-rebels-unhappy-with-sergio-aguero-deal )
Something needs to be done about these inflated salaries. It looks like Man City have managed to circumvent Platini's new rules so clearly extra controls need to be put in place. Personally, I don't think any player should be paid even as much as £10,000 a week for playing a game they enjoy (not just footballers). I would also make the Champions League only open to the League champions. This would mean there would be a more even spread of decent players amongst clubs (they can't all play for the 1 club). The CL in it's present form has fuelled the current malaise