That's the point that I am making tbh, that you have to pay through the nose to get a proven top quality player. The risk that I was referring to, relates to paying smaller but not exactly cheap sums of money in the hope that a 20 million striker becomes a 70 million pound striker. It seldom works imo.
The best example of this is our purchase of Lukaku for circa 30 million at a time when 30 million was a lot of money (it was before Moshiri as well). If we want to replicate something similar to that and actually get ourselves a decent striker, then we will need to spend at least 60 - 70 million pounds. And because we are unattractive to top players, I personally think that we may have to pay that type of figure for someone that could be over 30.
I realise why people think that is insane, but messing about with 20 - 30 million strikers will just maintain our also-ran status imo.
I get where you're coming from.
People act like it's easy to replace a striker we sold for £90m. Twenty goal per-seasons strikers don't grow on trees.
Realistically, we aren't getting any in their pomp. So, we have four options:
- Try and steal a march and get a young prospect (we tried this with Sandro, but it didn't work out)
- Pay a big fee for a top, proven player just past his prime. This would probably also mean huge wages to even get him to think about coming here (an example would be Cavani).
- Or, pay a middling fee (£25m is ultimately about the average now unfortunately) for a player from a team in a lesser league who has a good record, and take a gamble that this will pay off (Tosun is an example of this).
- 'Cast offs' from bigger clubs - probably our best chance of striking gold (like we did with Lukaku). But it's still a gamble.
Someone like Rodrigo from Valencia could be a good, realistic acquisition, but even if he became available, a 27/28-yr-old in his prime is going to attract more illustrious teams.