I don’t know about you, but I was jealous of Aston Villa winning a tie 6-1 on aggregate against a decent Club Brugge side in the Last 16 of the Champions League.
The soul-destroying thing is… that should have been us – and could quite easily have been us had Moshiri had an ounce of competence as an owner.
We all know the recruitment strategy was disastrous from 2016 to 2021 (old news) and that it’s been extreme sustained cost-cutting ever since. But let’s looks at what our squad might have been had Moshiri not pulled the plug at the end of the 2020-21 season. At that point, we were about neck and neck with a Villa side getting its act back together – and ahead of a Newcastle side yet to be bought by a sovereign nation.
With a very unremarkable net spend compared to our peers, we could easily be looking at something like this (indeed I’ve included a lot of players we were strongly linked with but couldn’t afford):
First XI
Pickford
Porro (Spurs)
Digne (now at Aston Villa)
Branthwaite
Guehi (Palace)
Matheus Nunes (Manchester City)
Onana (now at Aston Villa)
Gibbs-White (Nottingham Forest)
Kudus (West Ham Utd)
Gordon (now at Newcastle Utd)
Joao Pedro (Brighton)
Second XI
Johnstone (Wolves)
Aarons (Bournemouth – on loan at Valencia) – or Coleman
Tierney (Arsenal)
Tarkowski
O’Brien
Garner
Wharton (Crystal Palace)
Iwobi (now at Fulham
McNeil
Richarlison (now at Spurs)
Boniface (Leverkusen) – or Dominic Calvert-Lewin
What could have been… The good news in some ways is that we are now at least back on a stable financial footing and should be able to, like every single other Premier League club, spend more than we recoup from player sales year on year.
It is of course not just how much you spend but how you spend it. But those clubs with a healthy net spend and a good strategy are doing very well. Our horrible neighbours are the best example. If, like Villa, we can sustain both for a decent period, then we too can take our place in the later rounds of the Champions League.
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