Claudius wrote:
We have to be careful about Barca-La Masis as a model. As far as I’m aware, that place had one golden generation that formed the foundation of the strong Guardiola teams. Otherwise, Barca has largely behaved like other super clubs, buying their way to their top. Maybe Ajax is a good comparison for what they consistently did until the 90s. There are a few good finishing schools in France, Germany, Austria we could emulate.
In the end, however, for a club of our size, you need to buy a lot of expensive senior players. There is too much variability in potential player outcomes when you buy and develop youth. Take Nelson and Sancho, for example. A year ago I kept hearing that Nelson is just a year behind Sancho. Now one player is going to be a 9 figure transfer this summer and the other is a complete mystery. That’s why building the end-to-end market beating transfer team is the key!!
Funnily enough, I just mentioned to my friend that Nelson was once comparable to Sancho 😆 .
I would say in addition to buying players, we need to sell a lot better overall. There's no shame in selling great players if you reinvest into the team correctly. No one is going crazy over our players anymore.
We need to find our Suarez/Coutinho to sell for the big bucks.
