Fair enough. I felt it was implied as you’d unlikely ever sign a 27 year old who has never played about championship level, but the semantics don’t overly matterAs far as I could tell, the OG point was about buying domestic talent from below; not age.
Main thing I take from this is that buying in bulk is the best way when signing less experienced players (Though Sigurdsson, Wanyama were already proven in this league and Wanyama, along with Chadli, were clear successes). A bit moneyball but it works.Then again: Holtby, Siggurdson, Lamela, Jansen, Sanchez, Bergwijn, N'jie, N'koudou, Foyth, blah blah..... All 22 or under at time of signing. Even the likes of Chadli (23), Chirices (23), Aurier (24), Paulinho (24), Wanyama (24).
What doesn’t work is the eggs in basket approach that seems to have developed since the second half of Pochettino’s tenure. You are of course right that playing at a higher level means you have less ability to take a chance on ‘unproven’ players, but I definitely think there’s an element of forgetting what got to us where we, erm, got.