The club's direction is towards becoming a profitable business. There is little to no doubt of that. The club believe last year's squad - minus its two most desired assets and with only one fit striker with a fairly poor goalscoring record - will be able to replicate the performance last year and also push on in Europe. The ambition is to make our Academy work - not to compete with wealthy clubs like Stoke for big talent. If we had a load of talent in the Academy then I would give this the big bravo. We don't.
Yes, I am being pretty negative, but my assessment is that the board lost Koeman because of its desire to slow spending. I saw us do exactly the same thing under Rupert Lowe - the man who created the most successful spell in the Academy's history - and that didn't really go to plan. If you'll remember WGS decided he couldn't get anything done in that situation and we began to slide quickly from promise to obscurity. People are saying we have learnt from our previous economic catastrophy, but to my mind that is a misunderstanding of what caused the catastrophe. A decline in squad quality and a drop down ans out of the Premier League were why we ended up on the brink.
Now, careful, I am not stating we are going down, but more that the club is making a huge gamble this year. Those implying spending is a gamble need to look at the history books again. Spending to excess is a gamble, but spending at a loss is actually a necessity in a massively difficult market. Last year we were the only club to profit on transfers, but we had a steady manager and a little luck (it was an abysmal year) and more than got away with it. This year may see the beginning of the slide.
All of this is hopefully wrong. Hopefully "decent" actually means plenty in transfer funding terms. Hopefully we are not so ball-achingly stupid to think an above average English winger is a replacement for the massive talent of SM. If we spend big on a good creative player I will be satisfied. But spending below sales esch year is a huge gamble, and should be avoided.