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Deleted member 24970
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Agree with all of this, but the other most natural market for us is to use our place in the food chain to buy the better players from clubs with less pull than us.
Williams, Bolasie and Gueye were all the best players from "lesser" teams than us as far as the current pecking order goes. January isn't an easy time to buy these sort of players as replacing them is very difficult for the selling club but, realistically, we should have a dozen or so clubs in the league we can outmuscle financially and be seen as a bigger draw for.
VVD would be an obvious target, especially given Southampton's propensity for selling their better players, but he is more of a realistic target for the summer than now.
January will be players on the fringes or at clubs where they need to raise money
Good point regarding the buying from lesser teams. We should mix buying the best from those around us in the summer, when the seller has time to find a replacement, January should then compliment the summer buys by buying from the top teams, players who are in the squad but not first choice. Im aiming that last sentence at the likes of United, Chelsea, Munich, Dortmund and Juventus as examples.
For example my targets would be:
Deeney/Ighalo in the summer from a team around us.
Schneiderlein/Mata type in the summer from United (Morgan because he doesn't play every week).
Then in January have a look at maybe loaning someone who needs to play and possibly build himself up for a summer move, I would say attacking Milan for Honda or Juventus for Sturaro.
If we could attract a decent name like Strootman or Brahimi then that's a great start.