- Jan 27, 2011
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Sure, you can take our their highest transfer (a whopping £80M - double our record).
Then to even things out and put that into perspective, take out our record signing in Davidson.
Juventus are still left with 5 transfers which exceed what’s leftover as our highest transfer.
They are hardly the fugal club you originally made them out to be is all I’m getting at. They do great business, but they are by no means cheap.
They ARE frugal compared to the Manc clubs, Madrid, Barca, Chelsea, etc... their annual wage bill is around £150m, 5 teams in the PL alone are well over £200m.
There are a lot of reasons why we could now start throwing record fees around (CL football again, constantly increasing commercial income, additional Wembley matchday income, new stadium, and ITK) and hardly any reasons to anticipate Juve spending over £50m on a player when they've already spent a large chunk on Costa, and currently have no major outgoings in the pipeline.
As I said they could get in the players head and make them force a move at that magic 40m Euro price, so are still a big threat (especially with Utd keen to sell abroad) but it's clear they have stricter limits to their spending unlike the other big powers in Europe.
If we are supposedly now able to operate on similar financial terms to Arsenal and Liverpool going forward, we can certainly edge out Juventus financially, but of course things aren't always so simple.
Edit: I gave you a clear reason to discount Higuain, the sale of Pogba for £89m a few days earlier! Did you think it was a coincidence that we spent over £100m in the same window we sold Bale? Of course it was related. If Dybala went for £100m then I could see them paying well over the top for Martial, but that doesn't seem to be on the cards.