Net transfer spend

[El Jefecito]

The thing is that I really think that considering you can add the money spent in January into the picture and the fact that they had to sort out the finance for the stadium the summer transfers were as much as anyone would expect from people trying to run the club as a business.

For a start all this talk of nett transfers is always guess work as just because the buying team paid £Xm doesn't mean will will see it after agents/the player etc. have taken a %age. Add to that wages going up and signing on fees and the picture can look very different.

I think we may have had more money available if a marketable asset became available but to be honest that is very rare.

I was surprised that Rafa went for potential in Babel and not an experienced wide player and we missed out on Heinze (not the new owners fault) but other than that I think we did very good business this summer.

I think Yossi in the last few weeks has looked as good if not better than any of the other siginings into the PL. There is a danger of just wanting pig name players to come on, at some point I really think that the number of players who have to be integrated into the team becomes a big problem. Before someone comes out with it I know Man City did it but it is much easier for a lower ranked teams as the opposition are likely to under-estimate you and there is much less pressure to perform.

Especially for us, we play a unique style, which requires both technical and physical adaptio, it's a far more difficult settling in process than it would be at most other clubs.

Do you think that Babel has ever been coached on how to defend before. I doubt, that's why I think we need to give the new guys a good 6 months to settle into the team.