I'd say we're in a similar position to where we were in the summer of 2018. Finished a difficult season with champions league football mainly thanks to having a top class manager. However, it's clear the squad needs refreshing.
Back in 2018, we had just finished a season at Wembley, the war chest rumours were in full flow, and Poch was going to get backed for the painful rebuild... obviously we know how that summer went. And pretty quickly a squad that Poch squeezed everything out of began to fade. That lack of spending compounded by terrible managerial appointments took us from title challengers to midtable just last November.
Let's hope Levy has learned his lessons. We've now got an elite manager and some quality players, but a summer of poor/limited investments and we will very quickly fall back to where we were. My main hope is he's seen what happens when you try the cheap option.
Paratici has proven he can spot a player. Conte is a world class manager. We've had a year of full stadiums, including NFL, concerts etc. Surely there's never been a better time to invest in this squad and establish ourselves as CL regulars again?
Don't fack it up Daniel.
Don't mess this up Levy/ENIC
posted on 23/5/22
Financially we are on a different planet to 2018.
Stadium built and refinanced. Beginning to push its financial limits with music & boxing & rugby etc. Talk that a naming deal is in the offing.
For both these reasons we will have a sizable budget and certainly none of the constraints that hampered us back then.
In short.....no excuses Levy.
BTW, Poch's painful rebuild statement was made in 2019.
posted on 23/5/22
Sure we can’t miss this position up.
Alistair gold has come out and said that the club will fully back Conte this summer
How much do we get for CL qualification?
It’s very exciting times indeed, I can see a big clear out and 6-7 players incoming.
It’s going to be amazing! He will not accept levy messing around buying players like Clinton N’jie on the last day of the season.
He will want early, high quality signings before pre-season so they’re fully integrated and ready to go by the start of next season.
It will be a mix of free transfers like Peresic (Paratici is famous for that) along with class ready to go players like Bastoni (that would be a dream signing)
posted on 23/5/22
Credit to Paratici. Bentancur and Kulu have been superb and hit the ground running. Most importantly without him, we probably would not had a chance of hiring Conte
posted on 23/5/22
absolutely agree-make good decisions and lets move forward
posted on 23/5/22
What do you think we’ll spend this summer? £150m?
posted on 23/5/22
comment by The Beast 🐒 (U2836)
posted 1 minute ago
What do you think we’ll spend this summer? £150m?
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Depends. We have to pay for Kulu and Romero first.
posted on 23/5/22
OP
To be fair Poch had plenty to spend. Just spent it very unwisely on mostly duds. The spend that included Ndombele, Lo Celso and Jack Clarke was criminally bad. Throw in the likes of Janssen, Njie, Nkoudou etc and there were some awful purchases under Poch.
posted on 23/5/22
comment by sandy, golden boot winner fa cup 1901 (U20567)
posted 1 minute ago
OP
To be fair Poch had plenty to spend. Just spent it very unwisely on mostly duds. The spend that included Ndombele, Lo Celso and Jack Clarke was criminally bad. Throw in the likes of Janssen, Njie, Nkoudou etc and there were some awful purchases under Poch.
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Revisionism at its best/worst. The likes of Njie and Nkoudou weren’t Poch signings but cut prices alternatives thrust upon him in place of the players he actually wanted.
Poch was a great manager but one of his major problems was that he tolerated too much of the board’s nonsense when it came to signings. He should have rocked the boat far more than he did.
Conte for sure won’t stand for the same crap.
posted on 23/5/22
What Levy says he is going to do and what Levy actually does are probably two different things though, and Levy`s idea of significant investment and a clinical approach to transfers probably differs to that of Conte and the fans.