Mkhitaryan age 27 - big fee, big wagesCosta age 27 - big fee, big wagesWillian age 27 - big fee, big wagesSanchez age 27 big fee, big wages
Mkhitaryan age 27 - big fee, big wages - Was 24 at the time of our bid and at £21.5 million I would argue he actually fits the mould of player that we have typically gone for in some ways. Yes we lost out to Dortmund but he wasn't a player the big guns appeared to be circling at the time.
Costa age 27 - big fee, big wages - Aged 25 when we agreed to meet the release clause on his contract (I recall it was in the region of £22 million). He elected to sign a new contract with Atletico and then Chelsea met his new release clause of (£32 million according to reports), and paid the lad 150K.
Willian big fee, big wages - Aged 25 when we tried to sign him. We dropped out of the bidding when the price got too high, Spurs were due to sign him and then Chelsea nipped in and took him.
You are presenting the above players as examples of the club going after the best players, "Sure we go for big players, we offer big money and we compete". I am saying we should have done more, clearly we haven't done enough. It feels like token effort. We were in for Willian, then Spurs got involved, we didn't want any part of a bidding war so we dropped out and didn't sign anybody if I recall correctly.
You are saying that the club have no choice but to continue in the same way in terms of transfer policy and that there is no other way to go about it. That has seen us finish 6th to 8th every season under FSG bar one.
It only makes sense to "buy" success if you have more money than your rivals.
I'm not advocating "buying success" in the way a City or a Chelsea have done so, I am saying our transfer policy needs to be a combination of the 2 approaches. We need to find rough diamonds and polish them up, we need to produce more players like Sterling but we also need to offer the manager some flexibility in the transfer approach where he can say I want that player, he can make everybody else in this team better and he is worth the extra money (be it wages or fee).
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