I didn't say our expectations should be a mid-table Premier League club. I merely pointed out that we choose to spend a greater proportion of our revenue on player wages than on transfer fees. As such there's no point comparing our ambition to other clubs based on the relative net spends when those clubs appear to be following a different strategy.
We won two trophies last season, reached the final in a third and came narrowly second in the league. The summer that followed saw us sell a forward and replace them with another forward for twice the amount. It's not exactly the Gillett and Hicks era!
We've had a slow start this season and in hindsight - after the glut of injuries we had - maybe we should have gone all in on a new midfielder. Man U spent all summer doing that though and ended up paying over the odds and giving an inflated contract to a player that I don't think would improve us. As it stands we'll be going into our next game selecting three from Fabinho, Thiago, Hendo, Harvey, Milner, Arthur and maybe Jones and Keita - that's better than anything outside of Abu Dhabi FC.
Finally, I don't think we'd be so into this discussion had we started the season better. So many injuries and key players being off form (Virgil, Trent, Robbo, Fabinho, Salah etc.) are more the reason for that than a supposed lack of ambition from the owners.
If you're argument made sense we would have the second highest wage bill after City since we invest on wages and not transfers?
According to recent figures, Manchester City are the Premier League's highest-paying club, spending around £355m ($430m) a year on player wages, with Chelsea's the second-biggest total at £343m. Manchester United's annual wage bill is now £323m, and Liverpool's sits at £314m
So just to re-iterate
over the last 5 years we're 7 in the premier league clubs for transfer spending
4th highest bill in in the premier league
Whilst being the 6th richest club in the world and likely to be top 3 in the next year or two
Are we performing well with what the club is spending absolutely, could and should they be doing more, absolutely, to suggest that the club is being ambitious is daft-
The issues are:
a) We didn't prioritise where we needed to strengthen properly this season
b) we're under-spending and got arrogant by thinking we've cracked the code to success
c) We have too many ageing & injury prone players in the squad