Yeah, Barca are one of the biggest teams in the world who are able to afford to blow massive amounts of loans in players because the banks aren't willing to do shit against them, I don't think we can point at them as a marvel of modern football in that respect. Their academy is, however, better than ours which is something we can aspire to reach and as one of our youth products was on a par with theirs, we're not THAT far off imo.

We don't buy the top players at their peak because we can't afford them so instead of going the Spurs route of throwing money at mediocre players in the hope that something sticks (which it did, for one whole season, whooo), we develop the talented youngsters which requires a little more management than spending large amounts on players at the top the second echelon in the hope they push onto the higher level.

I do agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that there must be a balance in these things though, I think it was slightly off but given that we were financially hamstrung I can see why we erred in the favour of development, now we see if we can push on I guess by buying in experience and slightly older talents.