He also inherited an aging core in FFP hell and only had a couple months to clean it up. Sabatini (and by extension Spalletti) went all in that season. They were knocked out by Porto in the CL preliminaries , and decided to not balance the books that winter mercato.
Monchi's hands were tied with Salah and Rudiger. He needed to make money -- and in a hurry. Not to mention they wanted to leave. Specifically in the case of Salah , who felt he had unfinished business in England. (we also can't hope to match Premier League wages)
sold a bunch of world class players
Salah and Alisson are the only "world class" players he's sold. Unless you foolishly include Radja in that classification.
Like I said, Salah leaving was a foregone conclusion before he took the job , and he sold Alisson for a (then) world record fee.
Gonalons, Hector Moreno, Silva, Pastore, Olsen are all crap players they spent a lot of money on.
Gonalons- 5m (will be flipped this summer)
Moreno- 5m (sold for 6m six months later)
Silva- a 6 month loan
Pastore- his biggest mistake , no argument from me
Olsen- 7.5m
In what world is that a lot of money?
Jury is out on their 'youth movement' as well.
The jury is out on them making top 4. The jury isn't out on the youth movement at all.
Cristante
Zaniolo
Kluivert
Lorenzo Pellegrini
Luca Pellegrini
Karsdorp
Under
......all added in 4 transfer windows. People seem to lose sight of this, but he's only been on the job a year and half , and he didn't get to start with anything resembling a clean slate.
Really, the only concerning one is Schick , and it's still too soon to write him off. His transfer is also
loaded with performance bonuses/payments to Sampdoria (which it's safe to say, he hasn't hit) We're in a much better position going forward with those pieces than we would be had we of tried to keep that Sabatini core together.
Look at the likes of Radja and Strootman now. He moved them on at the right time.