Isn't that what happened to Stoke though. Utter yard dogs yet they signed Bojan and Shaqiri and tried to play football and got relegated.
I never thought I'd say this, but, in defence of Stoke, they actually played some great stuff for a period under Hughes with players like Muniesa, Bojan and Shaqiri in the team. It all went to shit when they gave Hughes the reigns for transfers in conjunction with a very incompetent individual there called Tony Scholes, who they're only now getting rid of. As soon as Scholes was given the power with Pulis' set up having dispersed, he signed players like Imbula for £16m, Ndiaye for £12m and so on. They had started to evolve but then went too far with ill-suited players and lost all semblance of solidity. The best version of Stoke was the team between 2013 and 15 that got 3 successive 9th placed finishes in the league.
As soon as they had some poor luck with injuries and they started signing a random assortment of ill-suited, expensive footballers, it went down the pan. They transitioned from Pulis's set-piece reliant physical football to a style where they retained Pulis's solidity but added some technicality and flexibility to that. They just completely upset the balance with multiple stupid signings which lead to them losing that solid core they once had. Before that they were effective and still to this day the worst collection of yard dogs to ever set foot on a Premier League pitch.
It's strange with Burnley because as many have said, they might have the best squad they've ever had currently. The post I did a while back about their buyout that RedSince86 has raised higher in the thread is why Burnley fans should be very worried. Bought for peanuts on a leveraged buyout, very little squad investment - less spent than what they've taken out as dividends to pay themselves within 4 days of the club being bought no less - and the acknowledgement that there's no risk for them. They stay up, their noses are still in the trough. They go down, they eat up the parachute payments while they last and then sell at a small loss if they can't come back up, a loss that won't effect them because they never spent a penny of their own money on the club.
They've essentially had a few chats at the bank, stolen £30m from the club and will probably get richer as the club sinks like a stone.
