The fairly obvious one. We aren't getting De Jong.
That money has gone into Casemiro and now we can also add the remaining budget from the expected FDJ deal to get an attacker. Pretty simple really.
Anyone talking about Glazers or us losing the first two games and being in panic mode aren't taking into account how quickly the Casemiro deal occured and how clearly we have been chasing FDJ and Antony all summer.
Blame the Glazers all you want, but the transfer outlay has nothing to do with fan complaints or them potentially wanting to sell the club. The dialogue from the club had always been to spend money this summer.
People have simply chosen to get into hysterics, buy some of the media drivel and whine consistently.
Would it be fantastic if they went, sure. However let's not act like we didn't plan to make the moves we have made.
On another note. This idea of transfer strategy is absurd. From the look of the market this window, noone is following a plan. In fact, I will go as far as saying I can't think of many instances where any team had a clear strategy. It's always been about what's available in the market. Would anyone really say Fergie had a strategy in the market? The only ones I can think of really are the idea of buying galacticos at Madrid in the 2000's, Wenger's purchase of cheaper talent from ligue 1 and both Liverpool and our British preferences over the last decade; Liverpool with Dalglish and Hodgson and us with Ole. I can also definitively state that teams change actions depending on what's happening in the market. City, for example, have had windows where they sign players early and others where they have signed them later in the window. Liverpool have had expensive purchases like Van Dijk, but have also taken chances on talent like Robertson. The transfer market is usually a very reactive space because signing players depends on factors ( availability, price, buyer and seller) that are not constant. Look at the Barca deal for FDJ. We had agreed on a fee pretty early with Barca, but we then found out about how dire their financial situation was and how that would affect our ability to get our target. The price kept shifting based on Barca's financial situation. The availability of the player, determined by both the player and the club, have consistently varied throughout the window, Chelsea ended up coming in as a competitor and the situation is still at a standoff. We negotiated that deal for De Jong relatively quickly and in most cases that transfer would have been concluded by mid- July. I think people generally read way too much into these things.
Last season, people were praising us for our business in the transfer market, but by mid-november it was clear it had unsettled our squad.
