Dossena 7m - Failure, but if you think he lacked pace then you are frankly mental. Sorry Brentie, but he was fast as hell. Slow on the turn maybe, but that's not what you were saying is it?
Riera 7m - Great for a season, was a dick.
Skrtel 6m - Bizarre that you ignore him. For me a clear success, but even if you have doubts you can't argue with his quality as a squad player for £6million, that's peanuts.
Lucas 6m - Obvious success.
Yossi 5m - Obvious success, turned out a dick again unfortunately.
Soto 1.5m - Again for the price, a clear success.
Ngog 1.5m - Sold for, what, double, triple the cash? Reasonable goals per minutes ratio, thrown into the first team too quickly perhaps but a solid signing for the price.
Voro free - Ok, not a success. £2million profit.
Maxi free - For free? Can't argue with his contribution so far, excellent squad player.
So I make that 4 clear successes, Skrtel, Maxi, Yossi, Lucas, 1 definite success for the price in Soto, 2 that you could take either way in Ngog and Riera, plus Voro. Did we get Bellamy under G&H too? I can't remember now. Poor. Anyway...
Not bad really. Plus are you even counting all the 'failures' from those early years? Pellegrino, Nunez, Josemi...I can't be arsed to remember them all to be honest, but still, that leaves us with about a 50/50 success rate which is about what you expect from transfers full stop - that's the benchmark really, below that you're doing badly, above it well.
It also ignores slightly the fact of football inflation - £10million bought a lot more in Rafa's first couple of seasons than it did in his last couple.
The point about inflation is a good one and one I thought about. But then, you start looking at 7m ounds players being worth 15m or so and it looks even worse for Rafa.
Indeed, he made 6 signings above 10m under G+h - Torres, Masch, Keane, Aquilani, Johnson, Babel and only 2 were successes. You had 3 failures and one who the jury is still out on in Johnson.
Listen, my point is that Rafa made some very good not expensive signings under Moores, players that improved out first 11 a huge amount. Agger, Pepe, Arbeloa, Garcia, Momo, Crouch etc... Under the Yanks, aint noone comes close to that list of players bar Lucas and Yossi. Not a single one.
I dont care if Voro or Ngog made us a profit, just as I dont care Bellamy did under Moores. They didnt improve the side or squad and thus were not good signings. Luis Garcia was a fantastic signing, yet we lost money on him. He was still a much better signing than some others that did fuck all in red shirts yet still made us money.
Fact of the matter is, in the last transfer window Rafa had money to spend (08) he spent around 20m negative net spend and seriously weakened the squad. Instead of Riise we had Dossena, insted of Crouch we had Keane. Riera was ok for a season but awful the next. Then, in the next Summer where we had 37.5m gross to spend, Rafa weakened the side again- trading sideways despite a 14m difference in Johnson for Arbeloa and weakening heavilly in Aquilani for Alonso.
I really believe that if you gave Rafa in 2005-06, 37.5m from the sale of a few players, he would have replaced them alot better than he did in 09. By then, too many battles, too many scars, loss of focus, loss of energy, loss of trust etc... all played a huge toll on him and he let his eye off the ball.
