It wasn't a list I expect to fulfil, just a list of where I see priorities.
I'm under no illusion it will be hard to raise money from the deadwood I listed, or that without CL next year the spending budget will be trimmed.
I'm not sure Bergwijn is really a gem. Contributed very little to a number of games so far. Seems like another Moura/Sissoko/Aurier type signing to me - has an exposed ceiling. The odd good moment amongst much ordinariness. Didn't really want him, not been won over so far.
I've been a big defender of much of the way Levy has run the club, but he took his eye off the ball during the whole stadium build. Badly.
I think we've got ourselves into a catatonic state and Levy needs to wake the fuck up and make some very big decisions about the direction we take now. He's modernised the facilities he now needs to modernise the clubs infrastructure and operational structure. DOF needed and the introduction of a much better recruitment and analytics department.
We are where we are - I'm frustrated by having had a decent first team 5 years ago (built up over a few years) but we've recruited 20+ players in the last 5 or 6 years very few of which have made much impact on the first team. And frustrated by Poch refusing to have a DoF and Levy backing down on insisting on one in case Poch ran off (he was making it known other clubs were interested), as well as the stadium proving more onerous to build than expected inevitably taking Levy's eye off the footballing side.
So we are agreed we need to rebuild the squad.
Problem is always the availability of players - as an example the best AM's available this January were Danni Olmo (who Atletico had sewn up long ago), Steven Bergwijn and Jarrod Bowen.
So I'm happy with Bergwijn joining who at age 22 looks pretty decent and should improve with careful coaching - still early days but he keeps his head up, knows where other players are (hence a decent assist record in Netherlands) decent goalscoring and assist maker. Given we didn't like the options out there at striker (other than possibly Piatek on loan) and the way Barcelona, Madrid, Chelsea, ManU and others reacted to the striking options, if at Spurs I'd have been pushing to sign Bowen as well given his goalscoring and assist making in Championship. Bowen's big downside is lack of speed, and that maybe why he didn't arrive - but we will need to sign an AM in the summer now.
I'm absolutely with you on getting a DoF and analytics team back in - and adding to that someone handling youth loans out so as to better develop our Academy youngsters to be more first team ready (or to come up with a better solution than the 'no play but train with first team' solution which has screwed the 18-21 year olds for a few seasons now).
But coming back to player recruitment, trying to recruit 4-6 players who are at the right level for us is no small task, especially when we need to sell the same numbers of existing players. So prepare to be disappointed if you are expecting all the players to be significantly better than Bergvijn - I just don't think there are that many top players out there who are available, and all of them will have lots of clubs vying for their services so we wont get all of our top choices.
But money won't be our biggest problem as it was 5 or 10 years ago, it will be player availability and our ability to identify the right players.
bus-conductor
was just a wuss...a fair assumption mind. But now you've backed him up. But I gotta ask why they were so scary...
