Who?
With most of our wages being compromised between Messi, Suarez, Neymar, Iniesta, Busquets and Pique you don't have too much room to sign top players, who could we have signed in the last year that's setting ablaze European football? Tielemans? Renato Sanches? Dele Alli? Kante?.
The fact that we pursued every Real Madrid midfielder (Modric, Kroos, Isco, even Asensio to a point) is no coincidence, those were the guys most likely to take the spot of Xavi and Iniesta as best midfielders in the world, but when Real Madrid goes to them offering being stars and 90 minutes per game, and we have to try and convince them to come fight their chances against Xavi and Iniesta that was bound to fail, probably even our starting mifdielders wouldn't like to have those guys in the squad, they were too big of a threat for their role in the team.
I'm more pissed at what we let go than what we didn't sign, Bartra would be an ok option as our 3rd CB, Grimaldo might be an idiot and screwed Barcelona before, but he was class in the LB, Thiago should've never left, Sandro was treated poorly, we didn't really need to go guns blazing for Alcacer, we already had someone of the same talent. We let go players that not only were valid and saw little money in return, they were raised by us, they would at least put more heart than Andre Gomes or Arda.
But the real problem is that we had a team built to play for three players, it didn't work always but it was a reasonable bet, losing a top 3 player and not replacing it would hurt any team at every level, can you imagine Real Madrid keeping their level if suddenly they lost Modric and didn't sign anyone to replace him?
