14 yrs ago, Blackburn were days away from being crowned PL champions. < ambition/finances dichotomy error at line 1 >
The odd 30-40m 'investment' here and there isn't going to make much difference though. Our best 15 players would cost that at least. To make real improvements costs 60m plus. And it's the FFP rules that make overspending by 40m on players dangerous while building a new stadium is exempt. It still seems to me that the stadium being open solves these problems. We clear upwards of £100m in extra income, all of which can be spent on the squad.
I disagree PS. I don't know how, when or why the status quo at Spurs became 'it is impossible to improve our squad without spending a minimum £60m' but I'm sorry to say it does smack of the kind of complacent arrogance that Poch himself highlighted after the Soton defeat. We aren't that good. We are a smattering of top, top players (no more than 6-7) with a far larger smattering of competent, bang-average players whose work rate under Poch is usually enough to see them through all but the toughest of matches. The fact that we lodged at least 2 bids for Grealish suggests that Poch himself doesn't think we need to spend that kind of money to progress. I acknowledge that the comparison is slightly unfair due to the wages they can offer, but when you look at City's activity over the past 2 years or so there are a bunch of players who have undoubtedly improved their squad and would without question improve ours too, who all cost far less than £40m. Gundogan, Gabriel Jesus, Ederson. Perhaps the biggest bargain of them all is the young FB Zinchenko who cost a couple of million and looks like a top, top player in the making. The deals are out there, we just need the perseverance to find them and the nerve and the confidence - and probably humility too - to pursue them. Also FFP can be side-stepped be structuring transfer payments to be paid off in annual installments, which is what all but the very wealthiest clubs do anyway. Wage bills are the true bane of FFP as they are fixed annual outlays that cannot be fiddled to appear on the next year's balance sheet.
Their TRANSFER fees. What are/were their WAGE fees ?? Or are you telling me those players are on 10K/week at Citeh ?? < for the glory >
Prices since two years ago have gone up a lot. All three players you mention would probably cost more than £60m now. As for Grealish, he might well have been a useful addition for £20m or so, because he wouldn't displace a non-home-grown player, but I doubt he'd have made many starts this year, even with our injury problems. FFP can only be sidestepped like that if you have the income to cover the increased costs in future years. We were not sure of that until the stadium was opened but I still think that if Poch had wanted a particular player who was available for £50m we would have done the deal. I don't disagree about the top players but bang average is a massive underestimate of the qualities of some of the others, even allowing for Poch being a genius. Very easy to spend £40m and get someone worse than WInks for example as was demonstrated several times in the last window.
I count the following as bang-average, mid table quality at best, lower league at worst: Trippier Aurier Rose (post injury) Sissoko (although vastly improved) Lamela Moura Wanyama (post injury) Llorente GKN Janssen That's a lot of players, all of whom could leave tomorrow and I honestly wouldn't blink. I'd shed a tear over Sissoko but that's about it. And I would add that the fact that they repeatedly hear that they cannot be replaced short of spending £60m only serves to reinforce their illusion that they are good players. It's also very easy to spend £40m and get someone better than Winks. But believing it isn't easy makes it highly unlikely that you will ever actually do it.
You even quoted the bit where I acknowledged wages are obviously a big difference In any event, none of them were on wages beyond our own structure before they moved to City. Zinchenko, Ederson and Jesus were on relative peanuts. So the sum of the story is that there are players out there who are good enough to improve us, don't cost a fortune and also don't command wages beyond our reach.
Price inflation does not apply arbitrarily across world football to every professional player though! Plenty of players sold for £5m 4 years ago and plenty of a similar quality and level still sell for £5m! Sometimes even less, depending on the financial and contract situations at the selling club. The rule of thumb vis-a-vis inflation over the past 3 years appears to be the following boxes: young, talented, in demand, going to the PL land paved with gold. Tick all 4 of those boxes and a player worth £30m three years ago will now be worth £60m to a PL club. Without that, players don't arbitrarily increase in value simply because they have existed through the passage of time in the world of football. True, there will be a certain hike on prices if moving to 'wealthy' leagues like the PL, but not the increases you are implying. How many of that list fall under that criteria? Lamela. That's probably it. He ticked all 4 of those boxes. None of the others did or do. We faced next to no competition for many of them (Aurier, Janssen, Lucas) some weren't all that young. And some (namely Wanyama) actually strongly ticked 3 boxes yet were downright bargains nonetheless, only serving to reinforce my point. A player with Sissoko's ability 2 years ago wasn't going for £30m and a player with his ability today isn't going for that either. We shouldn't be duped into accepting the mistakes we make as the norm rather than exceptions. 6 years ago a player with Lamela's reputation, age, demand, appeal and destination (PL) went for £30m. Nowadays you can look at the likes of Pulisic as an equivalent example who ticks all 4 boxes and is indeed going for almost twice as much.
That's all fine, but if you look at any club's signings well over half turn out to be failures. One of the reasons we have done so well is that this wasn't true for us over a period of about two years where we signed Dele, Dier, Trippier, Son, Alderweireld and Davies for a total of about 60m. To expect to be able to repeat this is unrealistic. Of course we should be looking to try to do it but finding players like that isn't easy. In the same windows we signed Fazio, Stambouli, Yedlin and N'jie.
You forgot to add ... and are not coveted by PL clubs who can : - outbid Spurs on transfer/wage fees - and possibly currently offer better "silverware" opportunities
Sounds like the choice is either dip into the market with a 50% chance of success or don't and have a 0% chance of success unless a wunderkind breaks through in that position from the academy and develops as quickly as the likes of Kane and Bale. I know which choice I'd prefer to see us make.
That used to be true but the previous success means it is both much more expensive and less likely to work. Our players have got more points than anyone other than Man City over the last 4 campaigns despite a whole pile of adverse events. They've also had a decent record in the CL. Oliver Skipp may easily turn out better than any CM we can buy. We will never find out unless we play him. Similarly KWP.
Right. Except we don't play them. Which is especially frustrating in the latter's case given the appalling form of our current RBs. So Poch has to make up his mind. He goes on every window about trusting his squad when in reality beyond a select group of 15-16 players he trusts the remaining 8-9 about as far as he can throw them. Your argument is pretty much the reason I wasn't too fussed when we missed out on Grealish. But that is only because we had been given a very clear picture of what Winks is capable of and I honestly wasn't sure at the time if a top player in the division below would improve on that. But there are so many players who literally don't get a look in and across a season 50+ games long we need them to. There are also plenty of positions where there are no obvious candidates coming through the academy to one day fill.
I expect he agrees with both you and me. We've definitely got some players that can be improved on and therefore won't often be selected, I'd say only Nkoudou, Llorente and Janssen are really in that category though. They are all recent examples of us doing what you want us to do, viz buying someone. Foyth, KWP and Skipp are players who will likely be excellent in the future but playing them too much early on could damage them. Skipp got a few games because Dembele, Dier and Wanyama were all unfit. If we had bought say, Seri or Keita or Jorginho, then he wouldn't have got a look in (and indeed we would probably have sold Sissoko to make the space in the squad). I'm really not trying to argue that we don't make mistakes, more that it is harder to judge than people think. In the 60s we rarely signed more than one player a season.
Here's the issue most people overlook: with the exceptions of GKN, Janssen and seemingly Wanyama, there is a place for those players in a SQUAD - and that's the point, sacking off the lot of them for whichever xG-inspired replacement would actually weaken the squad, for example sacking off Trippier and Aurier for a new right back would leave us with just KWP as cover, just like sacking off Lamela and Moura for a new winger would have Marcus Edwards as the bench option While there are areas of the first team that do need improving, notably a CM and a right back who would be first choice on merit rather than by default, focusing solely on the first team and ignoring depth would be fatal - as demonstrated by Sissoko and Winks stepping up this season to cover Dembele's decline and departure and the constant injuries to Dier and Wanyama. If Man Utd could win titles with the likes of Wes Brown, John O'Shea and Johnny Evans getting regular games a season, there's places in our squad for most of the so-called dross - but not the actual dross such as GKN and Janssen. We've still got one test event to go, so don't count your chickens just yet as we're still capable of buggering something up...
A vindictive person who couldn't get tickets for his daughters to the opening match v palace would laugh and enjoy the squirming and outrage that would be unleashed... But not me...no sireee...no bitterness here folks...move along ... nothing to see here
