It's not been bad. Forster for Gollini free for free for no real benefit other than HG quota. We had that before Gollini.... Peresic is a great player who will do us well for a year or 2. Again, on a free. No bargaining. No negotiating. There's plenty of examples over the years where free transfers or players with buyout clauses get done quickly. Bissouma is the highlight so far but even that isn't mega. £25m+ add ons is not a statement signing financially.
We've had substantially more champions league football than Woolwich and Leicester and yet they don't seem to act like they have no money?
When Klopp took over Liverpool they were generally behind us but they gave him whatever he wanted.
Pochettino had taken us from 5th/6th to 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and still barely gave him what he wanted.
He blatently saw Poch work wonders with what he had and figured he could carry it on. (and no, I don't rate Poch as a scout either before you say it)
Levy this time last summer had just made the worst managerial appointment of his 20 year reign and everyone knew it. Everyone where they tried to kid themselves or not, knew it was bad for the club.
He now knows that if Conte walks he has nowhere to go. He cannot pull any of his shit. We will never get an elite coach again if this goes belly up. They'll all laugh if Levy calls.
When Klopp took over Liverpool they were behind us in the standings, but by no means financially. And
when we were financially able to spend, we fucking spent. The difference between us and Pool was that Pool's scouting was miles ahead of ours. So they got players that improved them, whereas we just pissed money away.
And Pool was also not afraid to sell its best players, something that for us was the third rail. Which is why Leicester signed players like Maddison and McGuire. Why would they come to us to sit on the bench? But sell an Eriksen for 60m and get a Maddison, sell a Dele for 50m and get a Grealish and things would look quite different. And we would have money left over to further strengthen. As for Woolwich, let's not even go there. Sure they spent like drunken sailors, but if your assessment of good transfer business is how much a team spends, then you haven't been following football for too long.
The most important thing is to make shrewd signings. Signings like Son, and Toby, and Bissouma. I couldn't care less if they cost a bag of chips and a peanut butter sandwich. What's important is whether we have done or due diligence on them and they fit our system. In some cases it will take 50+ million to get such a player. In other cases it won't. And in every case it will also take the player wanting to join us. Which can be overcome by throwing wads of cash at him, but then we would end up like United, only without the financial muscle that United has.
But hey, keep insisting on this tired "pay the fucking fee, Levy, you tight bald cunt" narrative. Just look around to see who else pays the fucking fee. It's not as many teams as you think and, even the ones that do, do so very rarely. Yet you want us to do it all the time. A bit detached from reality, innit?