I was talking about the quality of what we have in terms of what Jose has to work with.
I don’t disagree though, I have a mate who I (used to) go with who is always asking for a ‘statement’ signing. Sometimes I argue that it as important as a ‘good’ signing but I think Klinsmann or to a lesser extent Davids was the last time I felt we’d signed a superstar, albeit in their twilight years. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I was excited at the prospect of Dybala, partly because he was a player my 7 year old recognised as a FIFA cover star!
However Modric, Berbs, Bale, Eriksen, Alli, Son prove it doesn’t have to be a ‘name’ to be a good signing.
Ndombele was a statement signing, but the statement seems to be that we are just not very good when it comes to breaking our transfer record! I understand our constraints due to our wage budget, then financing the stadium but since we established what now seems to be a golden era of a first x1, assembled for a relatively low cost, we have struggled to replace the players with similar quality even when spending bigger (Sissoko, Sanchez, Aurier, Janssen, Moura, Ndombele, Sessegnon represent a huge investment and nine of them would displace our peak X1 under Poch. Obviously 2 of them need more time but Lo Celso looks like the only decent business we’ve done in recent times.
Clinton and Kevin, maybe even Moura and Gedson make me wonder what the manager actually asked for - I can only assume it was ‘someone who runs fast, ideally one footed with little control over what is going to happen next, with limited physical structure and only played in weak European leagues. Or we just filter on pace 85+ in championship manager and sort by price lowest to highest...