[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

I personally think that there's such a jump in prize money from 8th-17th that you would probably be justified spending 20mil on a player to help you get there?

But that's presuming it would take just one player to push you that high, and that the player in question would actually deliver on the £20m you paid for him.  Why bother when you just can let your investment slowly mature with minimal extra expenditure and risk?

Frankly, I'd love to see us have a couple of seasons like Southampton, even if we were doomed to fail at breaking into the Champions League like them (and I firmly believe that the Saints owners will lose interest in the very near future specifically because of that glass ceiling).  It would at least be a thrilling ride, and yes, we might even win a cup if we're lucky.  But realistically, that's as good as it would ever get for us, and I just don't see why anyone would risk it given the catastrophic failures of other clubs trying the same.

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Yes, I see what you mean ska'd but maybe we need to try and join the likes of Swansea, Stoke etc so that we are in that band and not the bottom 7 clubs who are all in the relegation scrap.

To be honest, Swansea and Stoke are only one bad season away from a relegation scrap themselves.  In fact, when we beat Swansea under Pepe Mel in March 2014 they were perched just above the drop zone, and only narrowly scraped it to 40 points in the end.  That was just over a year ago.  They're not automatically safe.  No one is.