How have we not moved forward this summer? We have brought in a potentially world class defender in Calafiori and seem to be on the cusp of finalizing Merino, a player that would play in the midfield for every club in the EPL, bar maybe City, and is an improvement over the internal options we have already. We've clearly been looking into world class players like Isak, Guimaraes and players on the cusp like Nico Williams and Sesko but people here are acting like there are 10 great options for our needs that we are just ignoring, when the reality is that there are only a select few players that meet our needs. Adding to that complexity is that these players are all likely very expensive and very desired so it's not like we can just snap our fingers and get them. We also don't know how close to the sun we are flying in terms of PSR regulations, which would add further complexity.
I think that we had a few big targets in mind at the start of the summer that we were going to try for and then if we were unable to get them, the plan has been to investigate other options while also waiting a bit to see if something changes with those targets.
Defensively it sounds like our mind was set on Calafiori early and we went in hard and got him.
We also clearly wanted Isak or Sesko but were unable to get them to come for different reasons.
Guimaraes was also definitely someone we were hoping to sign but only if we could get him for a reasonable fee under his RC. To me, Merino has been the Guimaraes backup plan.
Nico Williams is/was clearly our #1 winger target and we tried to convince him but his mind seems set on staying in Spain. I don't think we have been able to figure out what our backup plan is to him and that's the one big variable for the remaining weeks of the window that I think could define this upcoming season.
