I'd say that a club who sacked their manager after an 8th place finish and a cup final have ambitions of Europe wouldn't you?
Spending money doesn't always equate successs, we've done pretty well without spending a **** load of money.
You'd think a Leicester fan would understand that better than anyone
Why don't you go and ask Newcastle fans how much they spent in the Summer before their last relegation...
Who have Southampton signed then? I'll tell you who, Jan Bednarek from Lech Poznan, a 21 year old centre half for an undisclosed fee.
Who are they linked with? Luciano Vietto from Atletico, a 23 year old striker, who was on loan at Sevilla but didn't feature in either squad that faced us??? I'm not seeing a lot of ambition there at all and you're deluded if you think that's a sign of ambition. Chances are they'll be losing VVD too and replace him with Bednarek?
And no it's not about spending money, it's about spending it on the "right" players. Maguire, Iborra and Ilheanacho will cost us less than £40m between them but we can still go and bid £40m for a player too.
Southampton can't because they can't afford it, neither can anyone below Everton and us.
West Ham are the most ambitious in the transfer market and linked with the better players but I don't particularly think they sign players thinking about how they'll fit in, they just sign whoever. I mean Ilheanacho, Giroud and Hernandez and players they've been linked with but are all totally different players so there isn't a real structure to what they want.
We want Ilheanacho because he's like Vardy and can play in his role or behind him. We know how he will fit into our team and our style of play but West Ham don't know what they're doing because they'd have to play a different style to suit each of those strikers. Giroud wants the ball to feet and on his head in the box, Ilheanacho likes to pick the ball up deep and play on the shoulder and Hernandez is an out and out poacher. This means you have to adapt your attack to suit their strengths (if you want them to score goals) rather than signing a player to fit in with the strengths of the existing team.
I can only assume everyone thinks winning the league was a fluke and we were just lucky to have only lost four games in 47. Thinking it was a fluke makes last season more acceptable and the first 25 games are a fairer reflection of our true level and parity is restored.
The problem with that is, if you take out those 25 where Ranieri changed our style, since the final nine games of our first season (when we changed our style of football) we've played 60 games, picked up 128 points, averaging 2.13/ppg (81 points over 38 funnily enough) and lost eight, against Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal x 3, City and Spurs, the last four while rotating a depleted squad for CL games and no defence or midfield for three games. Not making excuses because our squad simply wasn't good enough. So put that into perspective.