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1307 9:52 Fri May 12
What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

It wouldn't make a difference.
You need to spend £250 -333 million to really change our direction.
Add to that our best recent signings (Lanzini, Payet, Reid) have been for relatively small amounts.
Best to not spend big and spend time and money employing quality scouts and coaches instead of friends.
At our level £75 million does nothing so save the money and work with intelligence.

Sir Alf 10:05 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Brentford is right about the message from the 2Bobs when we left UP.

You don't think they lied just to make us leave without a fuss do you ? ;-)

13 Brentford Rd 5:37 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

What 75m?

Should be that minimum. Would like to see more spent. LM
Most other clubs even smaller ones will spend around that. Standing still really considering where we are.

The owners promised big things and the click is ticking. No point leaving Upton Park otherwise!

CR 5:11 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

If you think they are going to spend any where near that amount you are deluded.

13 Brentford Rd 4:55 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

So Benteke in not worth 30m according to Alex.
16 goals.
Twice as many as all our strikers combined have scored this season.

Pay peanuts get Monkeys is the general rule.

We sold our stadium & soul to compete with the bigger clubs who will be spending around 200m each this summer.

Let's see if the owners lied or not by how much they spend this window?
Must be worried about having to deliver on their end of the deal now.
I expect 75M AT LEAST!

Swiss. 4:46 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

We have to get rid of Carroll and Sakho but who will buy them? Whats their sell on value? Bugger all

I recon we'll need to spend 50m on 2 strikers alone.Maybe we'll get Bacca this time.

Darby_ 4:37 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Alex has seen the future. A team of Calleris and Tores.

Side of Ham 4:25 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

...and still our most expensive signings are just minor punts to the top clubs and even the likes of Palace, Everton and Southampton.

Gavros 4:02 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Yep. We've bought some right old shit. The rest of the premier league have seen us coming.

1307 3:57 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

He deserved a special mention

tnb 3:57 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Even we weren't stupid enough to sign Jarvis twice.

1307 3:53 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

In West hams 10 most expensive signings:
Carroll
Ayew
Jarvis
Upson
Dyer
Snodgrass
Jarvis
Valencia

I think you're catching my drift.

Alex V 3:15 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Lukaku I accept was a great signing but that was 3 years ago. Honestly how many Lukakus are floating around in the market right now? The bizarre thing about him was why Chelsea sold him when he was such a proven force in the premiership. I can't see them or any other club at that level making the same mistake again.

Side of Ham 3:02 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

There is value there to be had but with regards to West Ham we need to get in a few players who boss their positions and have some consistency about their performances.

We want just a couple more players where teams will feel that once added to the likes of Lanzini and Antonio up top will be a real threat and totally compliment their style of football.

I THINK these couple of players up front will cost a fair few bob.

tnb 2:56 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Eriksen cost about £11m at a time when Tottenham weren't the fixture in the top 4 that they unfortunately are now. A hypothetically similar player at a similar stage of his career now would probably cost a bit more, but not more than twice as much probably. You can't argue he hasn't improved Tottenham.

Lukaku has already been mentioned and is a no brainer.

But yes, there aren't too many examples. I don't think that necessarily means there is something innately dangerous about a £25m fee though, although obviously the risk increases as the fee does if the player doesn't come off. That's why as I said I'd rather spread a finite amount a bit more widely than just two or three headline grabbing players, so I can see Alex's point there. I think the worry comes when clubs get blinded by how much they want to make a big signing and forget that you need to objectively believe that they are worth the money. And that's not so much about a figure of 20/25/30/50 million or whatever, it's about what goes above and beyond an individual club's typical spending. And if you're going to do that, given the risk, you had better be damn sure the player is going to add something.

A lot of the time these big signings are also PR exercises to show the fans that the club means business. Some work, some don't. Even Ozil fits that. Yes, great player 'on his day', but has spending £40+ million on him improved Arsenal beyond where they were before he signed? Clearly not.

If you want to spend 30 grand on a car so you can say you have, then good for you. But if there aren't any decent ones for sale, don't go and spend 30 grand on a Corsa for the sake of it. We couldn't get a lovely new Mercedes in Lacazette or Bacca, but we'd told all our mates down the pub how much we were going to spend on a car and so we went and spent the same amount on a Vauxhall Corsa with dodgy handling in Ayew.

Savio was similar. We wanted to make a statement after Bellamy left and so, whatever the true fee actually was, we were telling all and sundry that we had proved our ambition by signing a world class youngster for £9m. Once it didn't work out, we had to start walking that back (probably to something closer to the truth) in order to reduce the embarassment.

There is definitely value out there though -

Dusan Tadic cost Southampton about the same as Eriksen did Tottenham, a year later. He is probably their best player. Bertrand cost them about the same.

Townsend and Zaha cost Palace less than £20m combined. Benteke to be fair cost about £25m and hasn't improved them anywhere near as much as those two have.

Capoue cost Watford less than £10m and while they haven't been exactly racing up the table, along with Deeney he is probably the player whom they would be much worse off without.

Michael Keane cost Burnley around £2m, because Louis Van Gaal is an idiot, and it looks like they are going to make a massive profit on him some time soon after he has already made a massive contribution to them over the last couple of seasons.

Rondon cost about £12m for West Brom and he's not been brilliant, but he's still scored more goals over the last two seasons than our own £15m man Andy Carroll.

In a similar period, we have also unearthed Cresswell, Antonio, Kouyate, Obiang, Lanzini, even Sakho before he went mad, all for reasonable fees. So we can do it. What we need to do is to review what happened with those signings and try to do more of that and less of splurging cash on the likes of Ayew jusy to prove that we can do it.

Alex V 2:33 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Was Bolasie worth what they paid? I don't think so.
Was Slimani worth what they paid? I don't think so.
Was Benteke worth what they paid? I don't think so.
Was Ayew worth what we paid? I don't think so.

Yes some of these delivered something. But not what I would consider good value.

I think you can go into the teens in terms of figures paid and you have similar issues.

Was Borja Baston worth what Swansea paid? Flatly no!
Was Boufal worth what Southampton paid? Not yet, no.
Was Isaac Success worth what Watford paid? Nope.
Was Jordan Ibe worth what Bournemouth paid? Nope.
Was Musa worth what Leicester paid? Nope.

I could go on - for me there is clearly a massive issue with clubs at our level finding value from high cost players. I don't think that model delivers.

Alex V 2:26 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Go back beyond last Summer and you have to start getting interpretive - few clubs outside the top teams had the budget to spend £25m on anyone and the prices were generally much lower. I think go back to 2015 and the sort of players we're talking about generally cost somewhere in £12-15m bracket. And there again I see a lot more failures or average players than successes.

I just don't believe that for clubs like us, looking at higher priced players is where you will find value or success. If it was, there'd be more success stories around us.

Lee Trundle 2:24 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Bolaise, up until his injury, was playing decent for Everton. They wouldn't see him as a failure or disappointment.

And Slimani was purchased by the Premier League champions, not a team outside of the top 6.

Alex V 2:22 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

I just mentioned three.

Lee Trundle 2:21 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

"I can think of lots of failures or disappointments"

So you can't actually think of one?

Alex V 2:18 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

>>> I'd love the know all these failures and disappointments you can think of, considering Lakaku is the ONLY player who's been purchased for over £25m outside the top 6 teams.

Which is one of the points I was making - there aren't many players that actually fit this mould. Lukaku cost £30m in 2014 - what would the equivalent be today? - £50m maybe? Last Summer maybe you'd put Benteke, Slimani, Bolasie and Ayew in this bracket. Of those Benteke has done okay - the others don't have too much to show.

Like last Summer, we're in danger of pining for a bracket of player that just doesn't really exist.

Darby_ 2:17 Mon May 15
Re: What's the point in us spending £75 million this summer?

Benteke and Lukaku are alright, but they're no Jonathan Calleri.

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