I see most of this as 'woe is me' excuses. The gradation comment was made because you made it sound like we're helpless to sign quality players, just because we can't spend 40M on a guy right now - which I wasn't ever in favor of in the first place.
You're cherry picking your argument as well - this is what I was talking about when I said people needed to be objective. You can't just cite the 'better' signings, and then ignore all the other wasted money. We're talking about the guy's work over three mercatos - there are some serious misses. And Pirlo was free, and earning a great wage ffs. Basically, the players you mentioned should generally represent something of a minimum level of quality (except for maybe 1 or 2 additional younger guys on the cheap, who have considerable upside), and then we should be giving our current youngsters a run out.
Yes, I would have kept Trez. Also: Giovinco, Diego, Melo. All of those other "high earners" you're talking about? Except for Poulsen, (and Trez & Tiago who we let go for nothing - although thank god Tiago is gone) they're basically all still here, buddy. This 'clearing out the dead wood' argument is so old for me. We've released useful players at cut rates and the dead wood is mostly still here. At this point, those guys need to be gifted away, whenever possible. The season starts on Sunday (hopefully).
Marotta's brought in roughly 20 players, and we started with a few pretty solid players as well. At this point, with the resources at his disposal, if we don't have something that can approximate a 'foundation', then this guy shouldn't be working in professional football - in any capacity.