Burnley manager Vincent Kompany says the club's recruitment drive has gone exactly to plan.
The new Clarets boss has overseen massive changes as 13 players exited and 16 arrived at Turf Moor this past summer.
"Why I am pleased is because if you go back three months, and you put yourself in my shoes and the amount of work we were facing and we knew it was going to be tough but something we thought we could pull off," Kompany told Lancs Live.
"If you have to do 16 transfers, and if half of them go wrong for us then we have a big, big problem - and a lot of clubs have more than half go wrong. I can't tell you yet whether this team will be direct promotion, play-offs or not. I am still learning to get to know them.
"But we have a team that has growth and is competitive and that in itself is a tremendous achievement and that is not me, it is the recruitment team, coaching team and everyone around it at the club to make sure that this season we could play with some sort of a smile and some enjoyment and not just endure it.
"In football there can be a divide between the business and football but ultimately we are all on the same side. If I don't concede on certain things then by not doing that I am putting the future of the club at risk as much as anyone else.
"But if we are not ambitious, which we were in the transfer window, then we put the football side at risk. So one goes without the other, you don't get the football side without the football and the business without the football.
"And it was very clear, I spoke at the beginning that there was debt to clear. I don't care how the debt was there, it was there. It is part of the things that had to go so that was one parameter that I wasn't going to cycle around. Two, we lost 13 players of which only four had any value, most of the others went on a free."