It doesn’t really tell the whole story though. We’ve sold players like Modric and Bale for a lot of money, then reinvested that cash. How much did we end up paying for Bale? Less than £10m?
The Bale money has been largely recuperated with the sales of Chiriches, Chadli, Soldado, Paulinho, and Capoue mostly being for a profit. If we sold Eriksen and Lamela we’d far exceed the Bale cash.
Whilst the squad isn’t cheap, it’s been assembled through clever investments (and supported by a semi-decent production line of youth player sales like Townsend, Caulker, Carroll, and Livermore). I know you’re not making a point for or against the club, but I’m just adding that the background to how our team was built shows a pretty frugal and resourceful approach (with the exception of Sissoko, which was £30m straight down the drain).
I’d imagine our net spend isn’t in the top 100 in Europe.