To be fair though, it would be hypocritical of me not to mention it, because I love to point out just how fucking wasteful and bankrolled Barcelona are, Bergiristain would've been responsible for Hleb, Ibrahimovic, Henrique, Keirrison, Zambrotta, Quaresma, Caceras, Chygrynskiy et al. That's a lot of money wasted that Barcelona could afford to get away with. Although except for Quaresma and Zambrotta, I think all might have been Guardiola's targets? Either way. It's a lot of money up the wall, but you can't argue with the appointments made during that time, nor the timing of them as royhendo's quote from Graham Hunter's book points out. There's also plenty of quality signings in the same time as well. And fuck me they were successful.
I think that's fair. In my opinion, no manager/director of football is ever going to have more than about 60% of his purchases labeled "successes," at least not among the top clubs. What Newcastle has done this past summer is about as close as you ever see. Most of the time even really good managers like Ferguson hits around 50%, and that includes some big money disasters over the years.
That said, there are some truly atrocious deals in that list. For some reason I thought Begiristain was gone before the Chygrynsky deal went through; that was up there with Andy Carroll in the "awful purchases of all time" list. Also, that Ibrahimovic/Eto'o swap was a truly shocking piece of business from Barca's point of view as well.
Whoever comes in, I really, really would like to see them continue the one policy of ours that's made sense the past few years - that of aggressively pursuing the best players in the world age 16-18. That's where we can see some real value, even among British players, even if it won't pay off for several years. I would love to see us continue going after these types of players under our new DoF.