Losmeister wrote:alexafc12 wrote:Liverpool looking to cement themselves as top dogs of England. Thiago & Jota > Partey & Willian (probably cheaper wages considered too)
In:
Thiago - Done (£20m)
Jota - £35m agreed
Out:
Lovren - Sold £11m
Ki-Jana Hoever - £10m sale agreed
Ovie Ejaria - Sold £4m
Whoever their transfer team is we need to sign them ASAP
they have an enormous advantage of being EPL/UCL WINNERS!!!
we're trying to claw back to UCL legit challengers... and it been more than a decade since we have been considered that....
We don't need to challenge for the title to achieve those feats. This is hindsight 20/20, we were doing fine until 2016 when we had accepted that top-4 was the goal. Top-4 was indeed a trophy for us at the time.
The desperation to get back into the top-4 proves why Wenger kept on harping about it. I didn't understand it as much as I now do. What we are doing is trying to get back to the model of 2007-2016 where we didn't have to break the bank to achieve optimal success.
alexafc12 wrote:You can say the same about Partey. Why would he leave Atletico to join Arsenal ... oh yeah, because we'd be paying him a whopping £200k a week.
Jota isn't a player we need now, I agree. But it's another example of how much we overpaid for Pepe £70m. In the past 2 seasons the following have all moved club for half the price.
Jota - £35m
Ziyech - £32m
Sarr - £30m
Brandt - £22m
We've spent nearly £300m since Wenger left.
All for what? To get back in the UCL—something Wenger was doing without even spending a penny (net). During the latter years, from 2014 more specifically, we simply decided to be a club that would spend for the sake of spending in order to challenge for the title. Instead, we ended up dropping out of the UCL during the Wenger/Gazidis power tussle.
We simply haven't had a management team that has been strategic and smart enough. I hope that changes under the new administration—spearheaded by Edu and Arteta.
On Pepe, that £72m is one of the reasons why Raul was sacked. While Wenger's penny-pinching cost us Alonso, Villa, and Higuain, this spending spree under Gazidis and Raul has now left us in a financially volatile position.
In disaster preparedness and prevention modules, you don't realize the scale of disaster that has been prevented by adopting precautionary measures. We now know why Wenger was always against reckless spending. £300m later.