A lot of people seem to think that the progress can only be made if it`s visual and exciting in a sense of -- you bring a couple of big names, they become your best players and hence you progress. It doesn`t have to be like that, it can be the most boring thing ever.
Spurs finished 14/15 season only one point above us and went into new season with only two guys getting into their best XI - Alderweireld who was so and so at Soton and couldn` t get into Atletico team the previous year at all and a kid from league one. I`m sure that all Spurs fans at the time were massively underwhelmed because they didn`t buy a player or two of Gotze`s reputation so how could they progress?
Well, they made a couple of tweaks and ended up conceding something like 15 goals less and getting to the stage where they are a much better team than year before. That`s exactly what we`re trying to do this summer - a lot of people are moaning about the level of names we`re after and whether we`re ambitious enough but the thing is if we concede a good amount of goals less we will have improved dramatically and be in a much better position to reach Top 4.
Karius and Matip are clear improvements on Mignolet and Skrtel while the wide-forward we`re close to signing will clearly improve our front 4 goals output, not to mention you`ll have the likes of Can, Firmino, Coutinho and Origi all continuing to improve as they`re nowhere near their peaks.
It`s fine to have an idea of how the progress should be made but don`t neglect fresh examples of way of working being successful that is incredibly similar to how we go about doing things.