Alan Shearer has shared a post on Twitter exposing Mike Ashley, showing just how pitiful our net spend has been since June 2016.
As the table below highlights, only Southampton (-£10m) have a ‘poorer’ net spend over the past three years, with us ranking second bottom with a total outlay of just £4m.
Over this period the club have sold Sissoko (£35m), Wijnaldum (£25m), Mitrovic (£22m), Townsend (£14m), Thauvin (£10m), Merino (£10m), Janmaat (£8m) and Cabella (£7m) to name a few.
Gayle and Ritchie were our two big signings in the summer window of 2016, costing a combined £20m plus, but the lack of ambition shown since we gained promotion to the Premier League has been quite telling, with Jacob Murphy (£10m) and Yoshinori Muto (£9.5m) our ‘biggest’ signings before Miguel Almiron’s £21m arrival in January this year.
Yes we had to contend with relegation and the financial hit that his brings, but this was a result of Ashley’s incompetence – and he’s shown little urgency to learn from his mistakes if his lack of spending since promotion is anything to go by.
The big money arrival of Almiron was a huge step in the right direction, giving us a quality player who was clearly top of Rafa’s wish-list, but this can’t be a one-off.
After all, Rafa will want to make big strides towards the top 10 and beyond if he stays this summer, but talk of a £50m summer budget doesn’t give him much hope of achieving that when the likes of Everton and West Ham are prepared to spend that figure on one star player in this day and age.
