You can't take on the Oil Barons and Oligarchs at they're own game even Utd will blow us away with they're financial clout.
Yes for sure we need to spend but we can't do that every season hence why we need to be more smart on the transfers than we have with the likes of Markovic et al.
Add in Klopp wanting to develop players on the pitch then allied with the odd VVD or Keita (mind you these two would still be gambles) and we might have a chance.
1) Antonio Conte said something yesterday, or was it the day before
“Every team has to understand what their ambitions are. If their ambitions are to fight for the title or try to win the Champions League, you must buy expensive players. Otherwise you continue to stay in your level. It’s simple.”
“My question is this: what are Tottenham’s expectations? If they don’t win the title, it’s not a tragedy. If they don’t arrive in the Champions League, it’s not a tragedy,”
“If they go out in the first round of the Champions League it’s not a tragedy. If they go out after the first game that they play in the Europa League and go down against Gent, it is not a tragedy.
“Maybe for Chelsea, Arsenal, City, United and - I don’t know - Liverpool, it is a tragedy. You must understand this.
“For us, if it is not a tragedy you can keep calm and then face the Champions League and try to do our best as we always do. But you must understand the status of the team.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/07/26/harry-kane-dream-striker-says-antonio-conte/In short, big teams spend not because they like to throw money and end up with poor buys some of the time, they spend because they see a need to get better.
2) Each and every team develops players.
Bailly, Lindelof, Andrea Pereira, Martial , Rashford, Lukaku, Shaw, Pogba.
Bellerin, Martinez, Holding, Kolasinac, Mustafi, Iwobi Chamberlain, Xhaka.
Ederson, Mendy, Stones, Sane, Sterling, Bernardo Silva, Gabriel Jesus.
Courtois, Rudiger, Bakayoko, Morata, Batshuayi.
All these are players aged 25 or younger in the other teams, players that still have time to develop before they hit their peak at around 28-31. This is not something that has stopped these teams from
INVESTING. Some of those investments will work out, some will not as is the nature with some of these things, but the investment is to try and make these teams better while depending on younger players to up their game. Regardless of what Klopp says, that is the reality.
The only question you have to ask is what are the ambitions of this team? Are people higher up OK with simply making the occasional top 4 appearance, or is there a shift to building a team that can compete at home and in Europe?