We have offered about 3 million each for a forward and a full back. We seem to be only able to spend another 6 million. Say 14 million if true. Hughes wanted to spend that on one player. A top class forward. We will never know who had the right idea. Hughes clearly wanted Prem success. Jol seems to be building a squad to last.
i never understand why not spending lots of money means we have none.
the only way forward for fulham is to buy younger players for £1-5m. this French lad sounds just the ticket.
Buying £15m strikers is all well and good but it is not sustainable in any way.
But we all know we haven't got any money, don't we?
We've just about increased our revenue to the point where we can buy the odd player without increasing our debt too much. Any large fees for players comes straight out of Al Fayed's pocket. So in this sense, yes, we could probably technically afford to splash double figures (in millions) on a player but only if MAF is feeling especially generous (we'll have to pay him back eventually I suppose). Otherwise, as you say, it's bright young things from RC Lens and the like.
Always going to be the way for a club of our size.
Part of the payback is when we take a young player in, which we have done a lot of the last couple of seasons, and sell them on for 10m, like we did with Smalling, this is part of the payback.
One of the obvious potential benefits to buying young, before they are known gems, is they may end up being good Prem players and will do a job for Fulham, if they turn out to be better than that, we sell them on, and if they don't pan out, they either stay as squad players or we let them go...not so much risk doing business this way as long as you good a really good one every so often.
I really like the direction we are headed under Jol more than Hodgson or Hughes. As has been said, basically, Hughes wanted big 'impact now' players, Hodgson wanted tried and true that would play with discipline and help now, and Jol is looking to build for the future while deepening the squad and making positions more competitive. Ideally with good scouting you can find, develop, keep a few and sell a few for a profit.
