The full quotes don’t suggest he is trying to pressure Levy like is being reported. He is, as always, being honest and balanced in his assessment. We tried in the summer, we explained the circumstances and we will try in January. If we don’t sign anyone we will explain again. He even says he is not saying that it is not doing things properly if you don’t sign someone, just that he always wants to improve the team. To me it’s more just honest assessment and if anything, a nudge to the players so they know they have to keep their standards up.
I don't agree that he's excusing us not signing someone - that last quote ('today we can say well done...but I think you cannot play with destiny, you need to build the team properly') is pretty indicative of the fact that we can't get away without signing anyone. It will have an effect, which is largely negative in nature. I agree with him on that - just as I agree with him when he emphasizes that our steady start is also not down to us not signing anyone. It wasn't a genius move, it was because we were skint.
Foyth is 4th choice centre back, Vorm is now 3rd choice goalkeeper, Llorente is third choice lone striker, and Wanyama is perfectly good back up for Dier. I believe in a couple of months we will see that Dembele’s decline has been exaggerated - he’ll still do well for us this season. But I think we probably would have sold Wanyama if we got a buyer and Dembele if he wanted to go - either way they are now at best squad players because we have Winks and Dier playing well and deserving of game time.
Dembele's decline is, for now, very evident. Even if he does well going forward after January, that's half the season in which we either use him sparingly or we see how he's becoming slower and more unfit, being bypassed or outfought more and more frequently.
As for Foyth being a 4th choice center-back, or Vorm and Llorente being third-choices, they're different to each other. In Foyth's case, he's 4th-choice center-back now - but if we had signed someone better (or readier) than him, we would likely have seen that person play more than him. Which might have given our other center-backs more rest, allowing them to get back up to speed more quickly after a long World Cup campaign. As ever, having more depth is never a bad thing - conversely, having a 4th-choice CB you can effectively never play because he isn't ready (as seems to be the case) can hurt us.
In the case of Vorm and Llorente, they've both hurt us by being on the pitch and being sub-par (in Llorente's case) and outright terrible (in Vorm's case). That shaky spell where we lost to Liverpool, Inter and Watford - we looked exhausted, but Vorm also did a very poor job in all those games. Imagine if we'd brought in someone better - Gazzaniga might still have been picked, but there's no conceivable scenario in which we end up weaker for the exchange.
Re: Wanyama, he's only perfectly fine as cover for Dier if he's actually fit, which is vanishingly rare these days. Again, having a fit back-up might have meant we could have rested Dier a bit more when his form dropped.
The point is not that there was absolutely no player out there. Just that when you weight absolutely everything up, the players that are clear, certain improvements on what we already have are actually few and far between. When it comes down to wondering whether Foyth et al are good enough for our squad...these guys are back ups to back ups, if we’re wondering whether they really need improving, we aren’t talking about that much impact in the grand scheme of things.
Like I said, Foyth et al aren't back-ups to back-ups, they have either been used this season or would have helped avoid our over-reliance on our starters had they been better. The impact we could have gotten simply by improving on them would have been considerable, to say nothing of the
unheard-of tactic of actually buying players of comparable or better ability to your starters (which is a shocking-but-true way other teams have improved).
I'm not convinced that this excuse flies, tbh - our squad has holes, big ones, and ample area for opportunity. I can definitely accept that it might have been difficult to move players on this summer. I cannot accept that we took a look at our squad and decided that improvement for what we could spend was utterly impossible - unless, of course, what we could spend was 0.00 pounds. Which, I concede, is definitely possible with the man at the top we have.
Either way, I hope we don't repeat the mistake this January.
