60 mill up front, yeh why not. So long as it's invested as well as Southampton have invested their summer money in your tadic's and pelle's, however look at spurs/liverpool and maybe you say no.
Chelsea/Man City/United (they will get it back together eventually) are billionaires. Even Arsenal and the RS simply have too much money for one good sale price to bridge that gap. A sale like Barkley maybe gets us up to Spurs (not Bale money just their normal money) level of spend for a year or two. Spurs FFS! For selling a once in a generation talent!
You're essentially looking at 11 games into a season for Southampton v. every other "selling" club in the Prem over the last 15 odd-years and actually considering the 11 game sample over the 1000+ game sample of all the selling clubs??!?!?!
The "best" example of sell-to-buy you would have as a non-Everton fan (aside from the 11 games of Southampton) is Everton selling Rooney. We sold him and "as a result" were the the only "poor" club to crack the top four in recent Prem history. It's the "best" example ... and most of us think we got ripped off with that deal ... not to mention despite some good seasons we haven't been back since.
Spurs also cracked the top four but they have more money and landed an exceptional world class talent (which is a better case for keeping Barkers than selling him). Aside from that? Nobody. No club has managed to sell their way into the CL (via the Prem) in a long time. So why do people still suggest it as a good strategy? Because we're so close? But we're close because we have NOT sold many of our best players. Baines stayed. Jags stayed. We sold Rodwell and Fellaini (even Arteta) but they weren't our best by a long-shot. Teams like Newcastle et al who pretend they are on our level are not actually on our level because they can't keep their Baines and Jags.
We'd get better if we could sell Barkley and get two Barkleys. But what are the odds of that? We won't get significantly better by selling Barkley and getting four players who are on par with our current players. And that would actually be a FANTASTIC bit of business ... and it wouldn't help that much! We'd have a much deeper squad (which would help a bit) but no upgrade in best 11 quality. Look at Arsenal last year -- we almost caught them because once they lost their best 11 they had a squad which (while really good) wasn't as good as our best 11. Best 11 quality is what will get us over the hump. You need a deep squad to play in the CL... but you need a great first 11 to make the CL. We can't afford both and we aren't already in the CL. Exceptional talent takes enough of those draws into wins to get you the CL.
Spurs/RS recently aren't just good examples of selling causing problems. They are great examples of how exceptional talent on just 1 of your 11 can make such a big difference.
Now obviously if you think Barkley won't work out then you'd want to sell. Sure. But how the hell could you know that?
Southampton will lose those players soon too if they continue playing well. They have established they are a selling club. The RS will come calling again (or Spurs, Man U etc.). They'll sell and the odds will catch up with them: they will make some poor or even just average buys and fall back down. It will also hurt the buying teams too because they will overpay. Everything about this benefits us ... as long as we can stay out of it.
It doesn't work in the Prem. We're not Porto. Porto couldn't be Porto if they were in the Prem.
As vomit inducing as it is ... the RS did well to keep Gerrard and it helped them a great deal to have a player (relatively) loyal to the club as a leader. Barkley could be (should be) better than Gerrard so imagine what we can do if we keep him. Not for sale. Not for 60m. It won't make us better than keeping him.
