I ain't defending Levy but your last paragraph is very generous to Pochettino, JM and Conte IMHO.
These transfers are all from 2019.
Sanchez (£42m), Sessengon (£35m), Lo Celso (£45m including loan), Ndombele (£59m) and Clarke (£10m) from Pochettino. £192m on 4 of the worst signings in our history.
Bergwijn (£30m), Reguilon (£28m), Rodon (£10m) and Doherty (£15m) plus Bale on loan (who he refused to play) for JM. That's £83m wasted in 18 months during covid with no crowds for almost a season and a half. He also bought Hoejberg for £17m.
Bentancur and Kuluchevski (£50m total), Udogie (£15m), Spence (£15m), Bissouma (£25m), Romero (£45m) and Richarlison (£60m) plus lenglet and Porro on loan. That's well over £200m in 18 months.
The only successful transfers out of that lot are Bentancur, kuluchevski and Hoejberg...and IMHO two of them were bloody awful most of last season.
We've had players like Gil, sarr, Spencer and bissouma ignored and sidelined to make a point at the expense of the team.
I agree, the recruitment strategy has been abysmal. But that isn't Ange's fault so he shouldn't suffer its consequences. 'Blank slate' should mean what it says on the tin, and it worries me how many times in the past 12 months Levy has pointed to our net spend and said in as many words: 'look, this mess is not my fault, we've spent money!'.
True, we've spent money, but the proverbial stops at him. It was him who sacked our best ever PL manager having only just started to seriously back him. It was him who then handed that squad to a manager who played the opposite style of football. It was him who brought Bale back to garner favour with the fans, when our manager believed (rightly) that only winning trophies would garner real favour and so he needed more than injury-prone 32 year olds on loan to accomplish this. We went half a season without a second striker, then signed Bergwijn in January - another player not wanted or needed but bought because the hope was he would increase in value.
It was him who handed a manager who has overseen the meanest defences in football history Rodon and Doherty to 'strengthen' an already crumbling back line.
It was him who then sacked that manager, brought in a DOF under criminal investigation, and appointed Choice F as our new manager before it all went predictably wrong. Then he appointed perhaps the one manager on planet Earth worse than Maureen at handling young players, and instructed his DOF to sign...young players!
I'd have more sympathy for Levy if the decisions surrounding the spending of money have made sense and at least looked to be cohesively in line with the nature and strategy of the spending...but they simply haven't. Instead, they've contributed to the overall problem, needlessly making a difficult situation harder than it needs to be.
Some of the players you mentioned perfectly illustrate this point, and whilst I personally don't think any of Lo Celso, Ndombele or Sessegnon will ever be good enough, I have a degree of sympathy for the fact that they were signed by a manager with a specific way of playing and within 4 months of signing, suddenly faced a succession of three managers who played the opposite way. The idea of playing Ndombele as a deep-lying DM or box-to-box midfielder is laughable. It is telling that Ange spoke very positively about Lo Celso recently - who knows! Maybe he will make a player out of him after all.
Porro is another good example of how it is so easy to waste money if the surrounding decision-making is totally off key. Signed from a team that (at the time) played the same system as us. Now in a system that is totally foreign to him. Is it any wonder he looks completely lost at RB? Is it any wonder Spence has vanished from view? Ange would never have signed them, it's as simple as that. They're not bad players, they just don't fit the system he prefers to play.
Backing the manager means backing the manager. Obviously don't spend beyond your means, but by the same token don't turn round to him in August and say 'right, this lot cost me £300m, now get the most out of them'. That is exactly what he said to Maureen, and Conte, and it didn't work.
Levy is hiding behind our increased net spend but it is a fig leaf covering a litany of systemic problems that have caused it to be wasted to such an extent.
