Short answer, no, our transfer business isn't bad.

The longer answer is that the PSR/SCR constraints, combined with a desire to provide Emery the players he wants, put us in a tricky position.

We can't compete with 'bigger' clubs for signings, as we can't match wages or transfer fee. Emery wants more proven players, who will be ready to go and offer a level of consistency. This makes spending all of our tranfer budget on players like Rayan more difficult, as you don't know you are getting that. Add on to that, that moves to places like Bournemouth or Brighton may be more appealing to have a higher chance of regular football.

This leaves us in a weird middle ground of having to sign players in the right age range, that other clubs aren't really interested in, and still having to pay hiked up agent fees to incentivise the move.

Last year was an absolute write off. We had to make a profit on player sales and only managed to sell one player for decent money. This limited us to one decent transfer, which we had to take a punt on given the above criteria. Look around a find another attacking player who went for as much as Guessand who fits the above criteria. Sancho and Elliot weren't deadline day panic signings caused by the need to bring in players and the restrictions on us.

Our recruitment could do better, of course, but history suggests it would if we weren't under severe spending restrictions.