Football

Well, a large gross spend and a small net spend (which is what it is) implies we've had a large turnover of players (which we have)

That implies we've not bought the right players, because we've ended up selling them again soon (again true, too many squad players, Voronin, Poulsen, Konchesky, Dossena, etc).

But at the same time Rafa had a lot of restrictions, there were too many holes in the squad, and not enough spare cash to just buy the big players, he always had to make do with second best. Nonetheless, while I think he is a great manager, buying players was not his strong point.

Since FGS have come in, they have gone on a completely different route. They are quite clearly trying to follow the moneyball principle. That's something that clearly works in a stats obsessed sport like baseball, not entirely convinced in football (football is too random, and low scoring, the best team doesn't win the game far more often than in other sports). So they've gone all out on young British players with specific skills (assists for example in the case of Downing and Henderson). We will see if this new approach works.