Not being funny but don’t we have one of the youngest squads in the league anyway? Team is crying out for experience and quality right now. If we were hypothetically selling all our squad now we’d still lose money on players we signed younger like Iwobi, Keane, Pickford, Gbamin and probably Kean.
The only players we’d make money off were the gambles like Holgate, Branthwaite and DCL. Digne and especially Richy are outliers because they’re the only 2 players we spent relatively big money on at a good age and have improved and increased their value.
The recruitment has been poor in general not just the age of it. These aren’t necessarily bad players either they just haven’t improved and some have regressed to a lesser player than when we bought them. The vast majority of the squad has lost a lot of their value and that’s why we’re in the mess of FFP now. Think a few older heads will do the world of good to settle the younger lads to motivate them, players who’ve won things and played at a high level not Walcott, Tosun, Bolasie, Siggurdsson, the list goes on and on.
Not against signing young players for the future but I’d rather they be more like Holgate and DCL than Iwobi. Big money on a young player is a lot of pressure to instantly perform and most times they don’t live up to it unless they’re a star. Small money is no pressure and fans won’t really care either way unless they come good, look at Gibson and Adeniran, both signed for £5m or so as youths and no one really cares, Gibson looks like he might get a chance but Adeniran probably won’t work out at this point. No one cares or thinks of it as wasted money though. I’d rather gamble on youth than try to buy the “sure thing” for big money and it failing honestly, I just don’t think it’ll work for a club like us.