On the other hand if it's not on his no.1 wishlist targets why buy ? Instead of 7 new players maybe we should've gone for just two big names...I can certainly see that's AVB's approach, did you really think he wanted 7 new players to replace 1 of bale?
No, but what appears to have happened was that Paulinho, Chadli and probably Soldado were signed primarily to play with Bale. I can see the logic of all them playing in AVB's system with Bale as a wide-right forward in a 4-3-3, Chadli left of Soldado and Paulinho contributing goals from midfield supported by two deep holding players.
Not that I loved AVB's tactics and style, but those signings above with Capoue and Sandro/Dembele in midfield would make us a very solid team, if a pretty functional one, with plenty of goals throughotu the side and a genuine monster in Bale to provide the quality and match-winning potential that is typical of AVB's successful systems.
I think Chiriches would probably have been brought in to replace Caulker in a like-for-like back up CB swap regardless of what happened. I can imagine that Capoue had been targeted to provide cover due to Parker's likely departure and Sandro's fitness issues as well. The fact that he went straight into AVB's team suggests that he was a target of his.
Bale then made it untenable for us to keep him by all accounts. By that stage, we'd probably already targeted/committed to the majority of the 7 signings, leaving 2 of the 7, but here is where i see the problems everyone's identified.
I think its clear that AVB wanted Willian and/or Hulk to replace Bale. Clearly we were done-over as far as Willian was concerned, whereas I think the wages Hulk was on, would be well in excess of anything we could realistically look to afford.
It's no good saying that in theory we could have afforded Hulk's fee with the Bale money. Don't believe the fee was the problem. But the Bale money was a one-off then we'd be stuck with whatever wage bill we would have been left with.
In theory, yes, you take £86m from Bale and you reinvest it with as similar a player as you can. The problem we faced as a club was that we'd already began a summer strategy based on Bale not being sold, then when he was sold, we were left with identifying a player that could not only fill the gap he left, but also fit with the existing targets we'd identified.
It's clear that Lamela and Eriksen were less than ideal fits to plug the gap and it all fell apart as a consequence. I'd suggest that, faced with the loss of Bale and hindered in pursuing the 'genuine proven quality repplacements' you talk about due to our wage ceiling, we've decided to invest in the best young prospects we could identify quickly and that were affordable and that could offer a realistic chance of contributing straight away as much as possible.
Clearly this didn't fit with the AVB vision of how the Bale replacement would have gone. However, I still believe he identified and was fully behind the majority of the 7 players we signed.
k:
