With spurs they bought well and sold well. We have sold well what players we had but not bought well. The net spend gross spend is both relevant and also not so depending on how the money is spent. The fact is we have not bought well. That is down to rafa but that maybe because he has had to go for his second/third choices. Spurs took in serious money when they sold bale so that skews things but if you take away the money we took in for both sissy and Gini then we would have had a much higher net spend. The fact is we have serious under invested in the right players. Even now I believe we are doing the same. We seem to be linked with goal keeper when this is not on the priority of players we need.
You do touch on an important issue namely which level of choice are the players we do eventually buy. We were after Reina, then the PSG second keeper, then Adrian and now someone from Sparta. Ignoring whether we need a keeper or not why would it appear to be the fourth choice not the first and/or second choice we are now aiming to get. Also how many of Rafa’s purchases (and every other manager under Ashley) are his first or second choice. That I think is always an important question to ask under Ashley’s reign. Same could be said of Carr as to how many of his first or second level id’d players did we get and how many were lower. Difficult to criticize anyone when you’re effectly not playing the players you want because some numpty of an MD decides player 4 is cheaper than player 1 and, therefore we’ll go for him and not the preferred choice. Imagine where Man Citeh would be if they went for Rivierre instead of Aguero as Rivierre was cheaper.
Conversely it depends who your first choice etc are because if they were unrealistic then really we are wasting time on players we will never get. Goalkeepers is a good example. His first choices were supposedly Reina and Cabellero. Pretty unrealistic I think we'd all agree. One went to Chelsea and one is playing for Napoli. If his targets after that are Adrian and PSG reserve keeper that is on Rafa. It is not like other keepers didn't move for reasonable fees. Matthew Ryan went to Brighton for 5m, Begovic to Bournemouth or 9m. Both have done solid jobs. I'm sure 5m would have been in our range.
