The Fish
Winger
Not bothered about that, it's mainly a load of shite anyway. The 4 players you mention ba and remy went to Chelsea nothing to do about wage offers. Townsend wanted to play in the PL and Ben Arfa was chased as he was a waster as proved since he left, apart from 1 season in France. None left because of wage offers.
Benitez has spent about £100m in little over a year building this squad. If pardew had assembled the same squad there would be hell on.
Ba left because of a transfer clause, as did Townsend, a clause that could have been avoided had we paid a little more in wages. Remy could have joined were he offered a commensurate wage to his value to the team.
Ben Arfa was chased out, but I was saying we didn't get value for any of them and haven't done for a while under Ashley. A criticism that is levelled at Benitez.
"About £100m" is a little harsh, but I don't care enough to nitpick. And fwiw we go over this every time, he totally overhauled a broken squad and made it fit for purpose. To do that and win the league will cost money, but it cost only some of the money we had available, so what exactly is the nature of your complaint?
Benitez has righted a sinking ship and returned to it the Premier League, Sunderland fans mithering about the cost of that is daft. We haven't broken any financial rules, we haven't blithely gambled on our club's financial future and we're near as damnit breaking even.
This gets juggled up as Benitez has wasted millions, only scraping to the title and will likely send us down again because, according to some on here, he's not a very good football manager.
I don't think it's a binary state, there's a whole swathe of grey in between those options you describe.Point still stands. You spent 100m.at least last season with little turnover.
Would you rather Ashley was sensible as he is doing now or put the clubs long to medium term future at risk ala Short.
I don't think spending the money we're to receive from the Premier League for this season, within this transfer window would put the club's long to medium term future at risk.
It appears Ashley & co are baulking at prices like £13m for Lucas Perez (regardless of whether the player would come or not), that's very very risky. Spending on quality to better deliver survive is a gamble, but hoping what you've already got is enough is a far, far more dicey prospect.
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