‘To do that you keep your best players while they are in contract’
Is that actually true though Billy?
Look at our last stint in the PL.
15/16 16th
16/17 9th
17/18 12th
18/19 14th
19/20 18th
From 16/17 we retained all of our best players year on year and what happened? We steadily regressed every season until we eventually got relegated.
I get where you are coming from but the reality is that in order to have a chance of progressing in the modern PL era you actually HAVE to sell your best player(s) at some point. The key is recruiting well to leave the squad in an overall stronger position.
FFP means that we are going to hit a point whereby if we don’t sell then we are not going to be able to recruit, this will lead to stagnation. You are then left in a position whereby you eventually get relegated and have to sell your best players anyway, only now it will be for bellow their market value.
I feel like you’ve got unrealistic expectations. The key isn’t to retain all of your best players, it’s to sell them at the right time for optimum value and to reinvest the money smartly. Dom will go in the Summer, that is pretty clear to me (even Kris Temple has said this.) I’m not worried about that at all, as long as we reinvest the money smartly.
As history has shown us, retaining all of our top players will only lead to gradual decline. This is a hard concept for some to get their heads around, but the evidence is there.