Lucas Moura was 23m. Ndombele was 53m, and only happened after we'd spent numerous windows with a negative or near negative net spend. Your record signing being a 42m young CB is not an impressive, big balls signing for a club expected to get top 4 in the Premier League.
Top 4 was a target; not an expectation.
As for £42m being no big deal for us in the summer of 2017, before the 'Neymar inflation' had kicked in????
.......You're having a f'kn laugh!!!
He was predominantly asked to keep getting top 4 with low level signings, and the odd relatively big signing thrown in. Our wage and transfer budget compared to other top 4 rivals was low. His inflexibility was justified by a string of bad cheaper signings.
Low net spend was a scenario that he signed up for; it wasn't sprung on him.... We all knew what the stadium build meant and that his main target was actually ascribed to have been to deliver CL football when we moved into the new gaff......... His remit between 2014 & 2019 wasn't "CL or else".... Not at all.
Poch may have had some responsibility, but it was the lesser half of that.
It was a tough gig(*)..... It doesn't mean that he didn't make a rod for his own back that come home to roost in the summer 18/19.
(*but It was equally a philosophy of youth and coaching that he and his mate Balague wrote a fucking book pontificating about.)
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