Since new owners took over our net spend was in fact ZERO.
When you take into account the sales (Torres, Ngog, Babel, Meirales . . . . . . . . .) and savings on salary of overpaids like Torres, Ngog, Babel, Jovanovic, Cole, Paulsen and the sales of an incredibly large squad (we got rid of 25 players) we actually were up a few million in this period, that includes salary savings for the entire current season. The players brought in are not on hight salaries.
The owners did good business but it did not greatly improved the squad as Adam, Downing, Carroll, Henderson etc. are not really giving us all we expected. I admit we are marginally better. However we cleary need a net spend of 100Mil or so (including giving extra large salaries to some players to attract them) if we are to get somewhere. I doubt the owners will do that. We'll be likely stuck in this reasonable mediocrity until we get some gems like Bale etc.