Being a realist and seeing approx 40-50mil to spend on players (one a season) this feels very much like when rafa bought aquilani. The market is crazy really and you almost need to be an oil baron or human trafficker to compete.
Our wages top out at 200k.
We properly report our salaries (all of them)
We accurately report the agents fees (all of them)
We have some money, more than other clubs but less than some.
we buy a lot of younger kids and stuff the academy.
We spent well before but don't seem to have a real eye for an early bargain. We clearly were put off haaland when we went and bought minamino and haaland only cost 13mil more. Perhaps he was already going to dortmund who knows.
We embarked on a journey with klopp and the club again experience and structure as it did so behind the scenes.
theres a 120mil main stand, a 70mil second stand underway and a 50mil training ground.
Now I call this making do. I have done so as we leave bit part players sat there quite happily knowing they are nowhere near good enough but the reality is if we went about hiding wages in a holding company, hiding agents fees and ignoring the cost of capital works totally we would be man city.
I personally think solid hits the nail on the head. If we want to do that stuff and leave a shell company full of debt fine but we do not have an oila baron to wave a wand and make it vanish for us.
As we speak john henry is worth less total than LFC is supposedly worth. (about 2.5bil)
We are talking about mansour at 20billion nominally but anything his state wants to put in and abramovich who is over 1billion and anything putin wants to do.
The leicester, villa, spurs and arsenal owners are all worth multiples of what john henry is worth.
To put john henry in context he is worth as much as mike ashley.
I don't quite get what we expect here. the club is doing "ok" We can't compete with City and cheslea, not every year, not every trophy but we can be assured both will implode from pure and utter indulgence form time to time.