Gazza M wrote:
not 20m pounds in a post covid market. sorry but despite sambi being a decent talent, his body of work shouldn't have commanded such a fee, and I said as much at time. if he goes out on loan it's another crap use of funds that could've been better deployed last summer
Probably suboptimal but certainly not inexplicable, more typical if anything.
Gazza M wrote:
I'm seeing more reports of us only targeting 1-2 significant signings, and this push to renew nketiah and elneny lends credence to that. we'd have a pretty underwhelming squad if this is indeed the summer strategy, and makes our aggresssively defense focused resource allocation last summer even more annoying.
There's a few things going on here, though. Our summer planning has significant contingencies (not going to jinx it) that will make it hard to determine who are targets should be until they're resolved one way or the other.
When you're trying to improve a system that has moving parts that are exhausted at different rates, it makes sense to upgrade the longer-lived parts prior to the parts with greater churn. Defenders and keepers stick around longer and have more predictable output, are less unsettled and beset by temptations elsewhere.
We got used to the Wenger model of defence-building, but it's better to have a season where you're pushing ahead a bit on a solid foundation that needs better forwards than sign Vlahovic and have him start flailing around in disgust because you've got Stepanovs and Mustafi in central defence with Almunia behind them.
Think there's every reason to expect we'll be looking to lay out over £100m on a forward and a mid in summer if the other factors are in place.
