Typical short term thinking, evolution doesn't take a summer.
So I've mapped out the baffling alternative to the current status quo. i.e. to trim the squad and spend more money on fewer transfers, i.e. quality in its many forms over quantity. To fill any short term gaps we use u21s.
Based on the budgets outlined above, what is they way forward? Please make it realistic and not based only on chance. I.e. don't include the following:
1. Sign once in a generation players at 18. Repeat x11.
2. Get a really good manager who will do it for us....somebody like Brendan Rogers.
3. Try to win the Europa league and qualify for the champions league like that!
4. Buy a replacement for Danny Rose and then it's all perfect!
5. & worst all, wait for the small capacity rise with the new stadium to kick in and scale our income up by 15-25%, oh yeh that's only after the debt management period is over in about 2025.
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Hmmmmm. Why do you feel those 5 items happen only 'by chance'? I think all would be the complete opposite of a "by chance" scenario....
1. Over the years we signed a number of young promising players from overseas and/or the lower leagues..... Lennon, Huddlestone, Dawson, Reid, Bale, Carrick, Rose, Modric, Dos Santos, Ceballos, Falque to name just a few.... Bale was a very hot prospect that every big PL club wanted. Our record of signing and playing hot prospects helped us to get the deal done for that particular player. If we implement a strategy of signing young, highly rated players before they have fully blossomed then it is likely that some sort of portion of them will turn into true superstars, worth a huge amount in the transfer market.
2. Why is getting a really good manager something of 'chance'? Surely picking and keeping the right manager is something that is completely within our power?
3. Surely winning the Europa League is a reasonably achievable way of qualifying for the CL? Granted it is a very difficult competition to win, but surely we should be aiming to win it?
4. I don't think anyone thinks buying a replacement for Danny Rose makes everything perfect. However I think most sensible fans would say that things would be FAR from perfect if we (again) went into a season with only one senior left back at the club. Additionally having seen the youths at Spurs there isn't a single left sided defensive player who could fill in without it being detrimental to the team if and when Rose get's injured.
5. The "small" (actually 55%) capacity rise would make a very large difference to our revenue, in fact it is likely to make a bigger difference to our revenue than the monies that come from qualifying for and playing in the Champions League. It will not solve all of our problems and make us able to blow the 5 clubs who currently have the highest turnover out of the water, but it at least allows us to get closer to them and increase our wage bill.
If you feel that we would only see the benefit of the stadium after 2025 then I think perhaps you fail to grasp simple economics, after all we do not have to spend the first x years completely paying the stadium off and receiving no benefit. Have you not considered that the stadium debt would be structured over a number of years with part of our extra revenue servicing this debt and part of the extra revenue being available for the football club to spend?
The reaility of the situation is that we have 4 competitions to participate in. 3 of those 4 competitions we have a chance of winning and should be aiming to do so. This leaves the Premier League and of course it's not like we can take our eye off of that either. This necessitates having a decent sized first team squad. If we implemented a first team squad of 18 players plus youths then we would be throwing some of our younger players to the wolves, they are simply not yet ready to play at the highest level, remember that most of those players that you consider not to be good enough are actually full internationals for decent footballing countries.
Your proposed strategy would concentrate on spending all of our resources each transfer window on a single player. The problem being that players of that ilk probably do not want to sign for a club such as us due to us not yet dining at the top table and that's before we consider the fact that we cannot get anywhere near affording their wages. If we look at the last transfer window then I guess the players that fitted with your strategy would've been any of: Falcao, Di Maria, Sanchez, Costa or Fabregas? How do we attract such players ahead of the clubs who signed them?
There is also no guarantee that the 'superstar' players would settle in OK and be successful, if the player isn't successful then we are left with a player we have paid a huge transfer fee for, earning huge wages that become very difficult to shift without losing a significant amount of money. Arsenal paid a huge amount of money for Ozil for example and one could probably argue that he has been less successful than Eriksen. Unlike Arsenal, we could not afford to make such a mistake in the transfer market.
I think signing a number of promising but not yet global superstar players is a sensible strategy for our club. Of course some of those players will fail, but at least the financial loss on those shouldn't be too bad and if a percentage of the signings develop and turn into top class players then we either try to retain and use that top class player or, if we have to/choose to, we sell and use the profit to strengthen further. This strategy worked well for us for a number of years - taking us from a midtable team (at best) to a regular in the top 6. Personally I think that the problem was that last Summer, awash with cash from the Gareth Bale sale we adjusted our policy a little and tried to make some marquee signings for big money in Soldado and Lamela, for differing reasons both of those signings then failed to have any positive impact.
The club who have probably best demonstrated how to get there is Athletico Madrid..... and how did they go about doing that? Well as far as I can see they implemented a policy of the first three of those things that you put down to happening "by chance"....
1. Signing young promising players and then (often) selling them on at a huge profit - Torres, Falcao, Costa, etc).
2. Bringing in a good, young manager in Simeone.
3. Really going for (and winning) the Europa League.
As opposed to improving our fortunes, I feel that implementing your strategy would be more likely to result in us slipping down the pecking order - both in terms of our competetiveness in the league/cups that we play in and also in terms of our financial outlook.
