He spent £45m between Lallana and Lovren. £10m on Can, £10m on Origi, £5m on Lambert, £20m on Markovic, £12m on Moreno, and £16m on Balo.
That's £118m on 8 players, when all we realistically needed to replace were 3-4. Of those 8 players, 2 have been loaned out, 1 sold, 1 not even used in an actual game yet, 3 have decreased heavily in value (Lovren and Lallana probably worth about half of what we paid), and 1 has turned out to put in some decent performances - Can.
For those 3-4 holes in our squad, we could've averaged about £30m a player and bought proven, good players that all worked well in a similar system and performed the role we need to, instead, we bought 8 players that are known for their versatility, and were good at mediocre clubs.
£118m plus spent in a single summer. You can't honestly tell me that we don't have the means to acquire good players. Multiple people are responsible for this, but to victimize Brendan is simply wrong. He is just as much responsible as anyone else, if not more. He is the face of management for our club and should take responsibility for our failures, in my opinion.
It's smoke and mirrors though to an extent
Look I agree that we should have spent more wisely without a doubt but a lot of that money has been generated by sales and the net spend is always around the same figure
We shouldn't be looking really at the gross or net outlet, the area we can't or seemly won't compete with those above us is wages
That's the key area we can't compete with the big boys in
The over riding lack of plan and end goal is more what frustrates me, the fingers crossed aspect to our transfer work, the buy potential and hope
For the money in fees we have spent we should have s better than average squad and level of player we have.. I think almost every player in our squad has limitations and a ceiling in ability, none really excite me and wonder simply how good they could become and that's a sad indictment of our transfer work
But the spend is smoke and mirrors when you look at player sales and what wages we can or are willing to offer..
The only promise from John Henry's letter he seems to have kept is that we won't be paying out of over inflated wages, the wage bill for standout players has reduced, now we have a load of lads on similar amounts all with limitations, no standouts in the squad, no real star quality
A flawed transfer policy
Those players you name at the beginning of your post, players not on elite wages for a reason, they aren't elite players.
4 of them kids, 2 of them gambles as in players at lower level clubs best players and then a gamble for them to transfer their form from lower levels to attempted elite level, one gamble of a f**k head, one end of career lower level journey man
Not an elite top level player in them, not one that our perceived rivals would go for, not one on elite wages
All fairly safe, but at the same time utter gambles
Flawed running of the club
