The point here is I still believe that the most elite players in the game are significantly better than what we might term stars. I.e., someone like Saka is significantly better than say Martinelli, but even a Lamine Yamal is signficantly better than Saka. And while the capability gaps between these players is significant, there are actually very few of these players. Even a Martinelli is probably a top 15-20 winger in the game across Europe. And there are at least 300 wingers across England, Italy, Spain, Germany.
In this market context, it is actually hard to get truly differentiated, elite players. Yet you can still stabilise performance levels by getting the next tier of players because, based on the numbers above, they'll still probably be better than 80% of the fullbacks they face in any given game. And it's our inability to consistently beat the bottom 80% that's a problem right now. That's what I mean by managing the floor
You'll notice that this is very different from what I used to say 3 years ago when the team was still raw. We have great players now. Better depth will help them at least as much as more skilled colleagues.
