TambourineMan A £10/15m signing back then was considered middling, and anything above £20m was a big signing and those above £30m were monumental.
That perhaps applies to the top end of the league but I think your range is a bit stretched/inflated. Single digit million transfers were common and they weren't middling players. Chelsea came in and shattered the financial landscape at that point - £24m for Drogba, Ferreira £13m, Carvalho £20m, Robben £12m. These were big notable signings, not middling players. Man United spent an initial £20m on Rooney. Those players mostly left pretty significant legacies in the league.
TambourineMan So if you extrapolate accordingly, then paying roughly £90m for Tonali and Fernandes is the equivalent of paying around £13m in 03/04 for someone like Scott Parker who moved to Chelsea that summer for £10m.
Scott Parker was signed as a back up for Makelele in a team which went from second place at the time of his signing to win it's first title in 50 years the following year as the Abramovich money rolled in. He's no way comparable to 17th placed Spurs spending £200m to get them away from the relegation zone.
I can't argue too much with your final point, but the counter there would probably be more transfers? You're not seriously suggesting it's wise for Spurs, with the strength of their squad and work needing done to it, to be spending £200m on two players. One of whom has only around 100 top flight games and cost less than half that a year ago? It's madness.
