Think some people need to think carefully about the 'investment' in our team.
If our plan is to achieve success by competing financially with the other clubs we would have to spend about 500 million just to catch up with Man City's expenditure in the past three years. After that point we would then have to outspend them annually. And that assumes they are going to win the league rather than United or Spurs.
Like it or not, we aren't going to able to outspend the world's richest club owner so our strategy HAS to be to spend less but spend it more wisely than just buying the top two or three players trumpeted by the media as City are doing.
Moneyball, or something similar to it, is actually the only way we are going to be able to compete. So far I would say Downing has been the only flop signing as Henderson and Carroll have been bought for the future and Enrique and Adam are worth what we paid.
But just blowing money on big name players in Summer is destined to fail when its obvious that a number of clubs can spend more than us.
For me. we have a malfunctioning offensive unit bolted onto Rafa's defensive unit (minus Enrique though i would prefer Johnson/Aurelio at LB and Kelly at RB anyway with Lucas as DM). Pepe, Skrtel, Agger, Lucas, Suarez, Bellamy didnt break the bank when they were signed - it would be interesting to see how Rafa identified these players at such an early stage (as well as Alves, Jovetic, Silva, Eto, Torres and so on).
The owners have the right idea - its the way that idea is implemented which will be the differencebetween success and failure.
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