Burnley boss Vincent Kompany insists their 13 summer signings were necessary.
The Clarets have struggled this season as the team has battled to gel.
But Kompany said: It was a necessity. I don't like gambling, it's not in my nature so I tried to explain it a few times, but we had six players on loan. You take the combined value of just those six players that we would have to replace, from last season, I think all of them went from anything between 15-25 million. I'm not naming specifics but that's roughly what their market value was after being with us.
So just to get back up to that replenishment, we had to make some investments. And then as well for us, we were always going to be in a position where you're a little bit in that, like every team that's come up, you're a little bit in that in between zone where you're pushing to become a Premier League team but as well there's still the threat of relegation.
One thing you can't do is go and spend all of your money on players that you can't resell if the worst-case scenario happened. Then as well historically for us we've always had a very old squad, so it was just to find a little bit of balance. I think everything we did is to try and protect some of the core of the squad that was still there from last season. Like Jay Rodriguez was playing, Charlie Taylor and at the same time try and bring in players that were between maybe 23-26-year-old range. Buying proven Premier League players was never a possibility.
You find a way that makes sense and still that's something that I believe makes us capable of dealing with any scenario - which is important in our case."