Quote Originally Posted by occult View Post
Like buying anything, it's a question of quality versus quantity. With £30m do you buy two £15m or five £6m? I don't see the point of the latter because you end up with mediocrities no better than what you've got already. I know about the argument that you need competition for places and cover for injuries but you can have this with existing players including the Academy if the ones you buy are no better. In my view if you can't get your first or second choice forget it. Why buy Atsu when you've got a fit Aarons who's better? Why buy Joselu who's made no impression elsewhere? I know it's early to judge but Merino and Manquillo don't seem any improvement on, say, Haidara or Colback. It just seems to be turnover of players for the sake of it. With cheap players you end up in a season or two with ones you can't offload because no other club will pay them what NUFC are paying them.
Good post. To me, our main job this Summer was to improve the first team, not the squad. I think Lejeune falls into the first category whereas the rest, for me, seem to be squad additions. Obviously we haven't seen enough of Merino to say either way but i don't think he was one of our main targets. if you spread your money too thinly buy buying several low-priced players then you have a squad of more consistency but the quality overall is much lower. I think you should invest the large majority of your money in the first team and bit by bit do the same each window, targeting different positions to keep making little steps up in quality each time.