How often does longterm planning work out? Wilshere churned out 15 top class seasons for us, did he? What about van Persie? 18 good months and then he went and won the league for United. What about the dawn of a new era back in 2010?
There are no guarantees in football, and you have to bet big on youth unless you have depthless pockets, but you're inevitably setting yourself up for longterm disappointment if you ignore the here and now. When we signed Auba in 2018 people thought it was a short term signing but he has given us more great months since then than any other player we've had in the last decade has managed, aside from Koscielny. He's going to keep having more great seasons until his new contract runs out than anyone else is likely to match for the next decade too.
These are the players that take you places, and accordingly the players you build around. When they run out you go out and get someone of similar quality, you don't sign Richarlison and just hope that he, years from now, is going to turn out to be in that one percent of the elite strikers in Europe.
