Huh? The only time he's been allowed to properly spend was summer 16, and that was only because the revenue from ongoing sales vastly exceeded the amount we spent. Rafa agreed to stay under the understanding he'd be able to build his own way and have money for transfers, not constantly have his targets turned down and having to make do with bargain basement ****e like Joselu. This is having nasty echos of Keegan's transfer frustration.
Take the inflated sales from relegation out of it. Assuming we buy Muto. Rafa has had 125m to spend over three summers on his squad. Of the squad of players when he arrived there are are probably 8 players still on the books. Its not horrific. We didn't spend particularly well in the championship. To be honest he's had it far better than say Pardew who had maybe 86m over 4 summer windows. Given Rafa would be considered a far better manager I think it would be fair to expect mid table. To make the next jump we need a sugar daddy.
Why are you only looking at spend? What about sales, i.e. £30m received for Sissoko, £25m for Wijnaldum, £13m for Townsend, £6.3m for Cabella, £7.5m for Janmaat, £5m for Cisse....makes about £90m received in the summer 2016 just from 6 players! Add in the £10m for Merino and £6m for Gibson, and we've easily broken even from Rafa's time, you can hardly say he's been bankrolled. We didn't spend well in the Championship? Well we clearly did cos we finished 1st! Ritchie was easily the best player in the league, Gayle scored 20+ goals despite only playing half the games, Clark was great in defence, Yedlin was very good and Murphy did a job. Diame wasn't great but has come good now, only Hanley and Sels were failures, and we've pretty much made our money back on both of them.
We spent 65m to get promoted Its hardly some magnificent achievement is it? We saddled ourselves with likes Sels, Hanley, Lazaar, Hayden, Gamez. We've got rid of three now but its took time. We've spent everything we've generated as promised. He's still had 125m to build a squad of 14 players (plus the 8 who remained and maybe 3 youngsters to makes a squad of 25). He's had plenty of money the greedy fat whinging **** that he is.
What do you mean "the likes of"? Hayden was good and Lazaar, Hanley and Gamez were only signed as squad players.to Hardly Luque/Boumsong style disasters are they? And urgh yes it is a magnificent achievement, Villa showed just throwing money at something doesn't guarantee promotion. Your last paragraph is just Ashley fellatio, so I won't bother with that.
Ah, resurrected the old "Ignore the effect of the sales which weaken the squad by drawing value out of it - - you only need to look at one side of any balance sheet" argument. Hours of pointless fun.
I know it’s just like ignoring the circumstances which led to those sales and how skewed it all is. Great fun.
If you consider Hayden good, I’d consider watching another sport. I could have sworn we now can’t sign a left back because we are saddled with one who hasn’t kicked a ball. Boumsong was a better signing as was Luque. Gamez not required as we had Mbabu. Hanley not required, could have just loaned. The money and wages from this lot would have been handy now...
Absolutely love it. Like that £8m would make a lick of difference!!! We have, by the TV and grounds income alone, more than enough to fund RB, LB and CB cover. Comfortably. We have enough to have challenged Everton for Digne, let alone £6m for Joe Bryan! Ashley is choosing, deliberately, to do it this way - to not allow structure purchases whilst allowing structured sales - and nobody but the fat **** himself knows why. Hell, there was a statement in the accounts three years ago from Mr. Michael Ashley claiming SD would start to pay its' way to help with our commercial revenue. Lo and behold, would you "adam and eve" it, another lie. We could sell Lascelles tomorrow and we'd be counting out blessings if Federico Fernandez was his replacement.
I didn’t mention competing with the top six but we weren’t far off 8th so being frugal as you describe but at least investing something would give a chance of improving to compete with them, one of which actually was Everton. Frugal Burnley were only ten ahead of us and seventh can often be a European place. I’m not talking about spending to bridge the gap with the top six, just spending enough to have a chance of improving on last seasons tenth place.
Rafa was spoilt for the championship season able to splash out to build a squad for promotion which he achieved with the title. A few of those signings didn’t come off as happens everywhere but sadly he didn’t realise that Ashley only wanted to get back in the PL and future windows would reflect the aim to just stay up. The plan should have been to replace the championship only players with PL ones but didn’t happen. Looking at the “accounts” last season may have been almost explainable and Rafa proved himself again getting tenth place. This summer though is just totally unexplainable. We can all speculate but no one can actually fathom what Ashley is playing at. The idiot himself saw the disaster to the accounts relegation brought yet is doing his best to achieve it again.
They actually played and had the odd good game. But hey resort to insults like the rest on here if you’re not on the anti Ashley train. Sign of a very small man.
