That list are exceptions? If you look at the ratio of spending to performance at Man Utd, Barca, Chelsea, Tottenham, Juve (particularly on salaries to free players), Atletico, they've been abysmal.
Take Chelsea.
Who in their attack has justified their fee? Pulisic at 58m pounds? Werner at 47.5m pounds? Havertz cost them 72m pounds. Ziyech at 37m pounds?
Mendy at 22m pounds has done better than Kepa at 71.5m pounds.
Their best performers last year were Rudiger, Thiago Silva, Reece James, Azpilicueta, Christensen, Mason Mount, Jorginho, and Kante. Rudiger, Jorginho, and Kante are the only ones who came in for big money, Rudiger was thought of as a flop until Tuchel came in while many questioned Jorginho post-Sarri, so they could have been failures themselves, the rest are free transfers, academy players, or token transfer fees.
This is where we have such a major difference of opinion. You keep saying that how much we spend reflects our ambition. I think the way teams are scouting, constructing teams, and defining value is fundamentally changing. Sure, there's City, but they've spent over 1 Billion Euros to build their squad. United has spent the same. In contrast, we've spent about 235m on our entire squad, which is less than Chelsea have spent on Pulisic, Werner, Havertz, and Ziyech, alone.
The fact that our owners are building a stadium, pumping tons of money into the team (because of the previous owners), while having to handle the insane destruction of the previous administrations, to me, underlines their ambition. They want to win. Maldini wants to win. He didn't come to just build a "top 4" team and shrug. That's not in his mindset. But he's not going to pretend that we will spend like Berlusconi's time by breaking transfer records. And I'm fine with that.
My favorite period as a Milan fan was when Galliani (and his team) were smarter than everyone. When we were always finding value in players like Cafu, Stam, Seedorf, Kaka, and getting big-time performances from Pancaro and Favalli, and none of those players cost us a lot. Grabbing Ibra for nothing, Thiago Silva for peanuts? That was when I was at my most proud as a Milan fan.
I think that period of Milan management coupled with the banter era has smacked the "I think we should buy (most hyped player X) and (most hyped player Y)" out of me. I want to buy the next K2 from Genk, the next Salah from Basel, the next Lewa from Lech Poznan. Imagine the team Roma would have had if they just kept their best players like Alisson, Marquinhos, Rudiger, Pjanic, Paredes, Salah, Dzeko? Alisson was 7.5m, Marquinhos was 3m, Rudiger was 9m, Pjanic was 11m, Paredes was 6m, Salah was 20m, Dzeko was 15m. Many of them were loans with options. 71.5m for top-class players is amazing (Paredes, not so much, Pjanic was for a while, but you get my point). Unlike Roma, we don't need to sell our players (and we don't), and the guy who helped in a lot of these deals, Massara, is our guy. If Roma kept their squad together, they'd be one of the best teams in the world.
I'll end with this: I was curious and wanted to see what Newcastle fans thought and saw themselves, especially vis-a-vis Botman and Milan. Some of them were amazed they were going to beat us to a player, others joked about Milan being a small club (in comparison to them due to their financial might), but there was an element that I really liked; there were fans who said things to the effect of: "Milan really uses data, they're a smart club, so if they want Botman, he must be good." That's what I want. That if we are scouting a player, that means they must be good, even if others don't get it.
I want him now.
Contacts between #Milan and #Espanyol to try to find a square for #Castillejo (but there are 3 other Spanish clubs).
