DM lives in a world where every club knew Michu was going to turn out great and just chose to sign player x for £10m instead. He was the same when Cabaye, Ba etc turned out to be decent signings for Newcastle too.
What complete tosh, my dad supports West Ham, I saw every game Ba played, his quality was evident, he played 6 months for West Ham and had a very good scoring record, and looked a class above(gangly and weird, but effective and scored well). Michu wasn't from some league no one ever heard of, he played in the same league Santi Cazorla did, he outscored Santi last year, and if anyone between those two is lazy its Santi.
Ba was obviously already more than good enough for the premier league, being as he'd been there and done that. I can only assume that Gervinho looked as good as he does now, and in preseason and for his country as he did before we bought him. He was, and still is crap, you can spot a good player relatively easily, you just have to be looking. the few times I saw Cabaye before he moved, he looked like the guy pulling the strings, not the guy who is only "good" when other people set up goals for them (gervinho).
I never said Cabaye would play well in this league, I've never claimed he was a certainly brilliant player, I said for 5 mil for a known player that any scout with half a brain should have seen play, he was a great deal and well worth the risk.
This is where football teams live, and fail or succeed, risk. Michu scored 17 and cost 2 mil, if you watched him play you'd know that is so far into the "safe" area of the risk scale its laughable. Cabaye was also a safe buy, as was Tiote, as was Ba. 4+mil a season plus a big signing on fee for a player you already have, that you know isn't good enough on the incredibly slim chance that in 3 years he might be a completely different player is at the completely opposite end of the risk scale, its throwing good money away on something that is almost certainly not going to happen.
I've said countless times, I don't care if Wenger FAILS in the transfer market, why, I'd prefer to go out and get relative unknowns at 2mil each on low wages and hope one is good(this factors in that a good manager/scout should be looking at guys with decent potential), than throw the same money away on guys like Diaby, Denilson, Song, Sagna, guys you already know AREN'T good enough.
Fail trying, is fine, fail without even trying, just throwing money at players you already know won't ever bring you success, that is completely unforgiveable.
So smeg off with your insinuations of what you claim I've said. This has always been my take, 14mil on a striker that looks crap and has an average at best striking record in a poor french league is a huge gamble, and it failed badly and now we're stuck with him.
Spend 5mil on the same player, and at half the wages, he wouldn't be any better, but you've put FAR less money on the line, that player doesn't stop you buying other players, and the chance to move him on is pretty good with small losses. Buying Cabaye for around 5mil, with a low wage is the same, he could have flopped, but he wouldn't have cost you 30+mil to find out he's a flop.
Ba was a known, Michu was an incredibly low risk good option, Cabaye was relatively known though unproven in this league, looked class AND was pretty low risk. That is what made them great buys. If Michu flopped badly, its 2mil and a low wage, you can move him on easily enough, but his cost doesn't prevent you from buying someone else in Jan.
There are good and bad decisions, insane risk with little reward is a bad decision to make even if the player turns out to be a phenom, it was a bad decision. If you buy a low risk player and he turns out awful or great, it was still a good decision to buy.
