I'd disagree - a player from the championship is just as likely to adapt to the PL than a foreigner. Its very naïve logic to think Pepe will settle based on the league he plays in.
Neves has been pretty solid this year - poor example but I get what your saying.
Sanchez has offered nothing since he came, Lingard is abysmal. About time we cleared some of the deadwood out, both of those two are not needed in any capacity.
If we want to progress, we need to be ruthless with players leaving
Granted this may take time, but if we continue with the same players we wont improve. Sanchez in particular is a waste of everybodys time. So yeah - we'd be better off without them
I don't agree with you regarding your first argument. The best buys PL clubs have made in the last few years have been largely from Ligue 1 - Kante, Mahrez, Bernardo Silva, Fabinho, Lacazette to name a few. Whereas very few players from the championship have impressed in the PL. Neves has had a good year but he's been no where near Good as he was in the championship.
Also forget the league, as I said Pepe who is just two years older has 22G 11A as opposed to James who has 4G6A or something like that. I'm not saying James won't or can't improve, but if we are only buying one player for the RW, right now I'll take Pepe over James. But if we are buying a top class RW, I'll take James
Believe me, I'm no fan of Sanchez or Lingard but we have to be practical here, we can't buy 24 new players, no one can. We have to keep some of the players who are OK. I'm all for selling Sanchez but I'm OK with keeping Lingard as he's home grown, won't mind sitting on the bench and is an OK player. Every team needs bench players, right now we aren't in a position like Barca are to buy all the promising youth around to be their bench players because we don't have a proper first team. Once we have a proper first team, we can think of moving along the likes of Lingard and getting in players likes James or Lozano in