Crazy, but genuine question...£1bn spend

[RedTillI'mDead]

If we spent a £1bn in the summer, would it be enough to overtake City next year?

An article I read the other day had net Premier League spend at £1.4bn United vs £1.7bn to City in the entire history of the Premier League.

https://www.skysports.com/man-city-man-utd-premier-league-rivalry

It's hard to value the real difference without someone time adjusting this for the inflationary market impact in football.

Anyway that is a moot point, but in terms of spending it made an interesting read and provides a little context.

A £1bn is a crazy sum of money, but if top players are rated £200m then that is only 5 of the best.

Another way of looking at it would be how much is Citys team worth? And how much is ours worth? That's part of the answer, but there is also the premium to get the players to your team.

Take aside being managed by Mourinho and assume we can also have any other manager. That might mean the sum required changes, but the question holds. Would a £1bn do it?

Of course there are some unknowns like sale value of our players, but you have to assume not great given their high contracts and general poor/ average performance.

The stand out problem will of course be trying to pry away top talent and indeed is there enough top talent to take over City. I'm sure the answer to the 2nd is yes, but they certainly do have a lot of quality talent.

 

[Raw]

£1bn is still an insane amount of money, unless you only go for the very best players in the world. You could make a whole new squad with that money, and then some.

Besides it's not really how much you spend, it's how well you spend it.

 

[AlecHDR]

It is becoming very hard to like football.

 

[Bilbo]

Its too difficult to prise top level players away from clubs without massively overpaying. Scouting networks have never been as important in football as they are nowadays.

 

[11101]

What sets City apart is how they can keep buying players over and over for the same positions until they get one that works. The squad depth they have amassed doing that is incredible. If we buy a left winger and he turns out to be a dud, we have to live with it. They just go and buy another one in the next window. If we do buy someone else, we have to add them to the priority list and maybe we buy them next window, maybe in 2 or 3 years time, or whenever the finances work. We just cant match them in throwing money at each and every position at any time they like, and neither can anyone else in the league.

£1bn in one go doesn't really address that even though it would help our squad massively. If we buy £1bn worth of duds we are stuck with them. City would just go and replace the lot.

 

[AshRK]

The problem is city are here to stay and they will improve their squad even more. Wont say they cannot be dethroned but we need some solid backing from our board. This summer was a total waste. I know fans will say but Jose spent so much last summer why cannot he take us to the top with that, the point is if we are to overtake this city side, each summer transfer is important. Spending 250m in one summer and then just refusing to spend won't work.

 

[Guy Incognito]

What sets City apart is how they can keep buying players over and over for the same positions until they get one that works. The squad depth they have amassed doing that is incredible. If we buy a left winger and he turns out to be a dud, we have to live with it. They just go and buy another one in the next window. If we do buy someone else, we have to add them to the priority list and maybe we buy them next window, maybe in 2 or 3 years time, or whenever the finances work. We just cant match them in throwing money at each and every position at any time they like, and neither can anyone else in the league.

£1bn in one go doesn't really address that even though it would help our squad massively. If we buy £1bn worth of duds we are stuck with them. City would just go and replace the lot.

That's why I hate people when they level the 'oh but City don't have the world's most expensive [insert position]'. Miss the point.

 

[Schneckerl]

A £1bn is a crazy sum of money, but if top players are rated £200m then that is only 5 of the best.

No, players that are worth that much and would be willing to join don't exist.
Money would have to be spend on like 8-12 players.

 

[Andersons Dietician]

What sets City apart is how they can keep buying players over and over for the same positions until they get one that works. The squad depth they have amassed doing that is incredible. If we buy a left winger and he turns out to be a dud, we have to live with it. They just go and buy another one in the next window. If we do buy someone else, we have to add them to the priority list and maybe we buy them next window, maybe in 2 or 3 years time, or whenever the finances work. We just cant match them in throwing money at each and every position at any time they like, and neither can anyone else in the league.

£1bn in one go doesn't really address that even though it would help our squad massively. If we buy £1bn worth of duds we are stuck with them. City would just go and replace the lot.

Since Pep has taken over who are the duds they replaced? Nolito and Bravo, are there more that I can’t recall ? Those 2 combined 36 million Euros. Miki was 37 million pounds and we paid Arsenal 26 mil for Sanchez.

 

[Pass and Move]

We'd finish second in the league most likely.

Think about when Madrid were up against Barcelona at their peak a few years ago. The Madrid team were hardly lacking talent. You could have taken a world 11 and handed them to Mourinho and Barca would have dominated most matches against them due to the way the team played with absolute dedication to the tiki-taka system.

We could have Pogba, Kante and Kroos in midfield with Mbappe Neymar and Dembele up front and I think we'd still lose 80% of matches against the current City team because they'd still dominate possession and stifle counter attacks.

Fernandinho and B Silva are not better than Kante or Pogba, whilst Mahrez and Sterling are not as far ahead of Martial and Sanchez as yesterday's performance would indicate, so it's clear that the first 11 isn't the only issue. I don't think Jose could reliably beat Pep's City with even £1b unfortunately.

 

[11101]

Since Pep has taken over who are the duds they replaced? Nolito and Bravo, are there more that I can’t recall ? Those 2 combined 36 million Euros. Miki was 37 million pounds and we paid Arsenal 26 mil for Sanchez.

There have been more than that posted in another thread, but it's not really about who has outright failed, it's the players that aren't quite enough to start every game but are now all interchangeable in the same positions. Across the front line they have 7 top players competing for 3 or 4 positions. If you look down the list of appearances this season when you get to players who have played in only half the games, you still have names like Gundogan, Vincent Kompany and Gabriel Jesus. Do the same for us and you'll find the likes of Bailly, Lingard and Pereira. They have a second string of players that would mostly all start in any other team in the league.

I don't really see how we can compete. If we did magic £1bn from somewhere, they would just go and spend £2bn. This isn't just a major investment they have, it's a bottomless pit of money and its impossible for us or anyone else to keep up.

 

[Judas]

We could be right in the hunt for the title spending half that. We just need to spend smarter and sort out our entire approach to how we play.

You don't need a team of ridiculously expensive players to be contenders as long as you've got scouts doing their job and finding great talent before they're signed by big clubs.

 

[RedTillI'mDead]

No, players that are worth that much and would be willing to join don't exist.
Money would have to be spend on like 8-12 players.

I didn't dictate how many players, just saying the top players are mooted at c£200m. The reality is you'd want a better spread of talent than just 5, but arguably we also need at least a couple of stars.

 

[Igor Drefljak]

With Mourinho in charge, no.
Not trying to push the Anti Mourinho stance, but it's true.
That being said, that sort of investment and a manager to suit would work.

The difference between us and City right now is the calibre of players being bought.

They buy a prem proven walker for 50m
We buy a random young lad for 20m whose hardly featured

They buy a prem proven Mahrez for 60m
We risk buys like Martial and Depay that don't always work out

What City are doing now is what made us so successful as a club is sweeping up as much as the proven talent as possible in our own league.
Look at who we've bought. A lot of names are risky names, unproven players in reality that we hope work out, but they don't.

When City came into this money they threw a lot at it and their business was very hit and miss, but since having a solid foundation, they've been able to add a couple of players each season that are proven players.
We're playing catch up and are buying quantity over quality in some ways

 

[youmeletsfly]

If people find out that you're going to spend 1 billion in one summer they will ask for 50 mil a year, it doesn't really work tbh.

But, just for the fun of it, you have two versions:

A. You get the absolute best: Mbape and Neymar for ~600 mill + 1 CM + 1 CB

B. You buy a whole new fecking team with 1 BN

 

[KirkDuyt]

You just might. Though perhaps the crazy notion of improving the world class talent that's already at the club would be a more feasible option.

 

[Andersons Dietician]

There have been more than that posted in another thread, but it's not really about who has outright failed, it's the players that aren't quite enough to start every game but are now all interchangeable in the same positions. Across the front line they have 7 top players competing for 3 or 4 positions. If you look down the list of appearances this season when you get to players who have played in only half the games, you still have names like Gundogan, Vincent Kompany and Gabriel Jesus. Do the same for us and you'll find the likes of Bailly, Lingard and Pereira. They have a second string of players that would mostly all start in any other team in the league.

I don't really see how we can compete. If we did magic £1bn from somewhere, they would just go and spend £2bn. This isn't just a major investment they have, it's a bottomless pit of money and its impossible for us or anyone else to keep up.

I went and looked at all Peps signings and those are the only 2 since his arrival.

I do agree they can take more risks on signings than we can and they tend to do that but so far they have gotten most of their signings right, be that good scouting or the coaching used there. We also have to take in to account you say if we spend a bil they could spend 2 but at this point in time where do they really need to improve? They are at a point where they can just keep this team ticking over by adding 1 or 2 every year and maybe moving someone on. They wouldn’t need to spend that 2 bil if we were given a 1 billion to spend.
There is nothing that says if we spend 1 bil we’d even catch their current team. Personally I think we would and should easily be competing with 500mil or less, there are areas of our team that need improving but just buying players means nothing without coaching and so on.

Who really knows, I’d love the club to be given a 1 bil war chest but I have no faith in them to get it right at all and that seems like a bigger issue right now.

 

[Class of 63]

We'd probably get closer to City if we gave the £1bn to Charity(not Dingle), the players, and they are a talented group, took some actual responsibility on the pitch, and the Manager and his coaching staff did what they are paid handsomely to do.

 

[AbduRaheem]

I think we have potential with our existing team and add a few more to strengthen.

I'd like to see Mbappe and Hazard. (I'm only Hazarding a guess here). Both these on the wings would be frightening for a start.
As a striker, Griezmann would kill it.
Van Dyke to strengthen the defence and I think this would be a world beating team.

 

[Lentwood]

If we spent a £1bn in the summer, would it be enough to overtake City next year?

An article I read the other day had net Premier League spend at £1.4bn United vs £1.7bn to City in the entire history of the Premier League.

https://www.skysports.com/man-city-man-utd-premier-league-rivalry

It's hard to value the real difference without someone time adjusting this for the inflationary market impact in football.

I did that here: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-truth-about-our-transfer-spending-under-the-glazers.442009/

The main takeaway being if you actually take the time to put some context around the numbers you see Chelsea and City have spent a huge amount more than we have season on season

 

[Damien]

They buy a prem proven Mahrez for 60m
We risk buys like Martial and Depay that don't always work out

Better comparison to Martial and Depay would be Sane, who, when they signed wasn't proven but a similar price (£37M plus addons).

 

[Can23]

Why don't their top players like Aguero or David Silva get lured away by Barca or Madrid. Obviously City are insanely rich but living in Spain must appeal to those players, i think Aguero doesn't even speak English.
Must be paying them off the books somehow

 

[shamans]

Jose would play Messi as a full tracking right winger.

 

[Foxbatt]

SAF thought Aguero would not succeed in the PL. The same with Hazard. If we had a decent team of younger players when he retired we may not have been in this position. He later on became a short term fixer and did not invest properly after Ronaldo left.

 

[liamp]

How the feck have we not learned by this point that throwing ungodly amounts of money at a problem doesn't necessarily fix the problem?

 

[Keeps It tidy]

There are certain top players who are unattainable regardless of how much money we offer. And guys like Bernardo Silva, Mahrez, De Bruyne, Laporte, Mendy, Stones, Walker, Aguero, David Silva were all attainable for a side like us(Sterling was not simply because the club he was playing for at the time).

 

[Murder on Zidane's Floor]

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[Class of 63]

SAF thought Aguero would not succeed in the PL. The same with Hazard. If we had a decent team of younger players when he retired we may not have been in this position. He later on became a short term fixer and did not invest properly after Ronaldo left.

Wrong on both counts, United could not afford the wages City paid Aguero at the time of his signing, and the club(quite rightly) refused to pay the £6m Hazard's agent wanted to close the deal, as did City

 

[Fosu-Mens]

If we spent a £1bn in the summer, would it be enough to overtake City next year?

An article I read the other day had net Premier League spend at £1.4bn United vs £1.7bn to City in the entire history of the Premier League.

https://www.skysports.com/man-city-man-utd-premier-league-rivalry

It's hard to value the real difference without someone time adjusting this for the inflationary market impact in football.

Anyway that is a moot point, but in terms of spending it made an interesting read and provides a little context.

A £1bn is a crazy sum of money, but if top players are rated £200m then that is only 5 of the best.

Another way of looking at it would be how much is Citys team worth? And how much is ours worth? That's part of the answer, but there is also the premium to get the players to your team.

Take aside being managed by Mourinho and assume we can also have any other manager. That might mean the sum required changes, but the question holds. Would a £1bn do it?

Of course there are some unknowns like sale value of our players, but you have to assume not great given their high contracts and general poor/ average performance.

The stand out problem will of course be trying to pry away top talent and indeed is there enough top talent to take over City. I'm sure the answer to the 2nd is yes, but they certainly do have a lot of quality talent.

Difficult to replace a culture and habbit of playing slow and defensive football over one summer. While it would not be difficult to spend £1bn to improve the current players at the club, we would still have to create a playing style, relationships between the new players etc. £1bn over 2 summers and then at the start of the third season we might be somewhere close to the level City is at.

 

[Keeps It tidy]

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It amazes me that people think the problem is that we have not spent enough.

 

[Ekeke]

No. Not with Mourinho.

With someone else? Its possible.

 

[adexkola]

Aye, we got dissected for the 3rd goal by £1b in notes.

 

[Foxbatt]

Wrong on both counts, United could not afford the wages City paid Aguero at the time of his signing, and the club(quite rightly) refused to pay the £6m Hazard's agent wanted to close the deal, as did City

wrong. This was before he came to City.

From agent Barry McoIntosh. "I remember when I was in Argentina scouting, and I recommended Aguero to Sir Alex's brother, Martin Ferguson, to take him to Manchester United.

"Martin went and saw him play for Independiente against Huracan and Aguero was available for €3.5million as a 17-year-old.

 

[Class of 63]

wrong. This was before he came to City.

From agent Barry McoIntosh. "I remember when I was in Argentina scouting, and I recommended Aguero to Sir Alex's brother, Martin Ferguson, to take him to Manchester United.

"Martin went and saw him play for Independiente against Huracan and Aguero was available for €3.5million as a 17-year-old.

Not sure he'd need recommending to United as we were already aware of Aguero since he destroyed a United youth team ft. David Jones at the Hong Kong seven as a 15 year old, plus we wouldn't have been able to sign him till he was 18 and Atletico already had him sign on a pre-contract anyway.

 

[Snow]

Just spending money isn't enough but it can help massively. Spending it all at once is ludicrous because you're putting together a whole team of players that haven't played together before. You wouldn't see the benefits of that yet. Everton spent big last season but played wrong. Fulham spent big this season and changed their team that came up too much.

 

[MrBest]

Arsenal have shown the right way to do things. They didn't spend much in the summer, changed manager after 20 years and have looked pretty good. Spurs also spent nothing, are sitting in 4th. We have spent 420m already in 2.5 years and yet we are in 8th position. Somethimg is clearly wrong and I wouldn't trust Jose with a pound to buy me a chocolate bar.

 

[Josep Dowling]

Wrong on both counts, United could not afford the wages City paid Aguero at the time of his signing, and the club(quite rightly) refused to pay the £6m Hazard's agent wanted to close the deal, as did City

Refusing to pay agent fees made us lose out on so many players in Sir Alex’s final years. I certainly don’t blame Sir Alex for any of the situation we are in now but I think, much like Wenger, they couldn’t accept what was happening with football agents. We lost out badly to teams who accepted it. In the main City and Chelsea.

 

[2 man midfield]

We’ve spent a feck tonne, the same as they have. I know they’re a bunch of corrupt bastards, and at least we generate our money ourselves but the end result is more or less the same. Money isn’t it, it’s what you do with it. City have spent their feck tonne on players to suit a system of attractive attacking football with a clear plan in place on how to play it. We’ve spent ours on lumps who can’t control a football, while neglecting vast holes in our team, and now we’re wondering our players aren’t cutting it. We need to be smarter.

 

[Josep Dowling]

Arsenal have shown the right way to do things. They didn't spend much in the summer, changed manager after 20 years and have looked pretty good. Spurs also spent nothing, are sitting in 4th. We have spent 420m already in 2.5 years and yet we are in 8th position. Somethimg is clearly wrong and I wouldn't trust Jose with a pound to buy me a chocolate bar.

Arsenal look so good they are pretty much in the same position as under Wenger. Why has the barometer changed now Wenger has left? They have gone from reaching top 4 is rubbish to reaching top 4 is a success in the space of 6 months, I don’t get it.

 

[Pexbo]

It’s actually not that crazy a question. I expect City will spend the best part of £1bn over the next 5 seasons.