We seem to talk each season about "bring the players in early to give us time to integrate them into the squad", this never seems to actually happen as we drag our feet over transfer targets. This needs to change and we need to look at strengthening early, with no international tournament this summer there's no excuses.
Whilst it's the biggest crock of shit to taint football for many a year we simply can't just ignore FFP this summer. As fans we'll be calling for the likes of Cavani, or Falcao, or Goetze or people of that calibre to be added to the squad. What we need to realise is that our commercial and sponsorship revenue is still in a development stage, it's getting stronger and stronger but, at this point, we can't just go out and spend £80m on players without an attempt to "balance the books" with outgoings. We've got £20m in our pocket from the Balotelli sale, as we didn't add anyone in January when he left, but we'll need to offload some of the fringe players, and some of the players no longer good enough for the squad. RSC and Bridge will finally be off the wage bill this summer as their contracts finally come to an end. Kolo Toure is also out of contract and has been quoted as saying he isn't going to beoffered a new deal. Then you get to the "need to be shipped out" list. Dzeko and Kolarov top that for me. We'd need replacements for both, but Kolarov is a liability defensively, and doesn't offer enough going forward whereas Dzeko is frustratingly inconsistent and the poor performances are becoming too frequent. Lescott is another who may well go. I think we'd want to keep him for the final year of his contract as a back up left sided centre half for Nastasic, however with a World Cup coming up next summer Lescott has already been pretty vocal about his need to play regularly in order to make the England squad for that. I don't think we can offer him what he wants, so I think we may well sell him, which would mean a replacement centre half will also be required (2 realistically with Kolo also going).
The Tevez situation is an interesting one. He's got 1 year left on his contract. For me I'd offer him another 2 years on top of that, taking him through to summer 2016. He's proven this season that the desire and hunger to play are still there, and the quality has never been in doubt. The issue here is does he actually want to stay, or is he happy to leave when his deal is done? If he doesn't want to sign a new deal I'd keep him for the last year of his contract. Whatever we get for selling him wouldn't be enough to replace him, and I think the influence he could have on a title bid next season is far more valuable to us than whatever money we'd get for selling him on.
What we need to make sure is that, whoever we bring in this summer, they are of the standard requried to make us better. Nastasic aside, last summers signings did not do that. Javi Garcia, Sinclair and Maicon have all been disappointing, to different degrees, and for different reasons. Garcia simply doesn't seem to be able to handle the pace of the English game, Sinclair hasn't been given a sniff of a chance, Maicon is clearly way past his best and not close to good enough.
