This is a long one but "thuck ma baws" raises an interesting question (unrelated to his generous lispy offer of testicular fellatio) so I wanted to look into it with an open mind:
It's worked for Lyon. They've made themselves a CL regular, and not just because they're in a poor league but actually getting out of the group stages quite often. If you do it as part of a specific plan rather than being forced into it because you're skint it works very well.
I'll be honest I don't follow other leagues that closely so I looked up some numbers. Before the specifics I would say that is an extremely dangerous specific plan -- even without a "specific plan" to buy low and sell high most teams are trying to buy cheap players who outperform their value. Most of them fail. Even his detractors agree this is Moyes' strength -- yet we've not improved ourselves from selling to buy. We are a better team now sure but relative to the rest of the league (which doesn't just stand still; they are improving as well) we're still just in the mix for Europa which is where we were 5 years ago.
"(Lyon's) club’s financial results for the 2011-12 year, released on Monday, revealed a net loss of €28m." Are you sure they weren't "forced into it because they're skint?" It certainly sounds like they spent too much on players three years ago and had to cut back drastically since then.
We are in the ballpark of a French CL team (not PSG obviously -- from this point on assume I aware of PSG and treating them as the outlier which they are) in terms of our combined netspend and wages. In fact we spend more than most of them. We are not close to the Prem CL teams.
Wages I found their wages for 2010 which worked out to around 40m pounds a year. We spent 63m pounds that same season. I believe (since the loss from 11/12 and some player sales) their wages might actually be lower now. Regardless we can't qualify for the CL spending less than 40m a year on players -- they can. It's not the same.
Transfers If Prem teams decided to stop buying players from Ligue 1 they'd have almost 100m pounds less last year. There is probably usually a net profit from Spain too. We don't have a bigger league to come inject 100m into our economy. They aren't just a selling team; it's a selling league.
If we sell a player for a huge fee it's most often to another Prem team. The money may be the same but there is a difference there -- you have improved your opponents for the CL. Lyon would most often be selling out of their own league -- so they get money while their opponents stay at the same level. We might get 30m for Fellaini for instance but it will probably mean Fellaini is improving the team currently fourth in the league. How are we going to improve our league standing by selling our best players to the teams 1-3 spots above us in the league?
http://blog.bimeanalytics.com/engli...ish-pl-summer-transfers-theyve-spent-how-much
Not convinced myself but if I'm missing something let me know.
