Agree, I think though that we need to focus on the areas where a relatively low net spend can give
us a competitive edge i.e. since we can't realistically fork out £20 million on a player, then areas such
as the academy, scouting and sports science should be a priority.
Let's start with we have the best academy set up in the country, or the best scouting network or the top
sports science people.
Before getting involved in the manager merry-go-round, imo, the owners should have made these things a
priority. B*llocks to their usual vague utterances, they should have been hammering these points from the
beginning. Tbh, i have no confidence in Ian Ayre or Tom Werner and don't know what to make of Rodgers.
Exactly Ed, build the club long term through the academy and excellent scouting. Create a tight group of players that have developed together. We would need to use 'the market' less the recruit, lessening the total needing to be found for transfers and the errors that can occur when spending much larger amounts 'established' players.
But like you say, we need that negotiator to hammer the deals once we find those players. Arsenal have done good business with Podolski and Giroud. Even for established players they've got themselves value. How many sub £5M players have they send during Wenger's tenure. Even Van Persie only cost £2.5M.
We still haven't got so many parts of the foundations in place. Rodgers can start the overhaul of the scouting, but ideally he needs to appoint someone who will run scouting from first team down through every age group, working with all the coaches and different scouts at all the levels and also be responsible for the hiring and firing of the scouts. It's such an important part of the club, or should be, especially as the owners aren't looking to put cash in and expect the club to be self sufficient.
It's also another source of income to swell the transfer coffers of the manager. Just think how many young players the Mancs have sold for solid sums of money over the years. We need to stop giving our young 'unsuccessfuls' away and make sure we insert sell-on clauses into every sale to if we make a semi mistake and the player 'comes good' we at least benefit financially. Again Arsenal have been good at this. Pennant cost us because Birmingham had to pay a sell-on percentage to Arsenal.
We are still lacking in so many areas with no sign that we are going to get and improvement on Ayre.