My attempted realistic take on the summer.
Outs:
Walcott, Bolasie, Pennington, Bowler, Broadhead, Connolly, Besic, King, Olsen, all contracts expired.
Delph £3m. Bernard £5m. Kenny £3m. Kean £45m. Tosun out on loan again till his deal expires.
Total outs, ~£56m. Huge wages saved, approx £600k p/w on the above.
Try to shift Iwobi and Gomes if possible.
Ins:
Keeper on a free - Rui Silva from Granada has been linked, first team competition without eating into our budget. Romero is decent too.
RB - Someone with pace who gets up and down who can cross, like Aarons but not necessarily him. Can see us spending approx £25m.
CM - A #8. We’ve got Allan, Tom and Gbamin for deeper. We need someone like Gomes but much better, or another Doucoure type. I do like Anguissa, so someone like him. Again, can see us spending about £25m.
RM - Iwobi isn’t up to it and James is always going to miss games. We need to spend biggest here. Love the look of Leon Bailey but he won’t come cheap. This is where I see us spending £30m+. LM isn’t so urgent, Rich is first choice and I suspect Gordon will be back up next year.
CF - Tosun, King and Kean won’t be here next year. Don’t think we can afford to spend big here however unless we sell a centre back and promote Branthwaite, or a big offer comes in for Rich so we can buy both a LM and a CF. Otherwise, don’t see us spending more than £15m on a striker.
Potential spend ~£95m. Net spend of ~£40m, with less wages and far less bodies on the bill overall.