He has that hand tied behind his back because of

the lack of wealth of the owners, not because of the owners' behaviour.

It's not a hand tied behind his back though. He knew the situation coming in. We overachieved last season which gave him the luxury problem of having to plan for the Premier League far too early. You can choose how you do that. You can either take the increased income from the PL and have far more resources than you expected to at this stage in your plan, and continue with the same (albeit slightly adjusted) plan having the balls to deal with a potentially rough season, or you can throw your new found short term wealth in, deviate from the course you know, and gamble between doing a Leicester (pre-PL championship) or the more likely Fulham (and probably Aston Villa), fail and end up in debt and on a totally different course than the one you planned so carefully.

Posted By: Steve in Holland, Jan 14, 11:34:35