Mate, our net spend over ten years is negative. We've made more than we've spent, just from outgoings - never mind the enormous explosion in revenue from TV, commercial and so on.
We've wasted our CL premium - there was once a time when we thought it was the lack of CL stopping us from signing players. Well, we've been in the CL and absolutely nothing has changed. In fact, it's gotten worse - I prefer the days when we were out of it, because at least we signed *someone*.
We signed *no one* - absolutely *no fudging one* for 18 months. All of football thinks that's a macaronic thing to do, since no one's actually done it - but here we are, record-breakers.
In answer to your questions, it really doesn't matter how much we spend in terms of fees on players, because we made a profit on player sales in *all* of those years. He effectively spent nothing, unless you think reusing money from sales is an investment. If you hire someone to sell your car for twenty grand, and he buys three 5 grand couches and returns them to you, is that *investment* on his part? Did he take a big risk buying those couches?
Re: signing deadwood, and the resulting threat of blocking 'other signings', or the progress of the youngsters - a) well, we signed no one, so not sure what great other signings were waiting to come through the door if we didn't sign deadwood. And b) what do we want to be? If we want to be a big club, big clubs don't hobble themselves with 11-man senior squads to afford maximum space to the youngsters. That shouldn't be a primary aim, unless our academy is literally Ajax level (and it has never been), *and* our league is a feeder league, like the Eredivisie.
I know you know all this. I've spelled it out enough times. But that is lost amidst the crackling back-and-forth that *any* criticism of Levy generates - no matter how even-handed.
