Anyway, I think that was a pretty good mercato from Juve - somewhere in the 6.5-7/10 range.
I recall last year a lot of people commenting on Juve's average age becoming concerningly high. That has now been dealt with to a large extent.
Of course, you can't expect to replace all of those established players with the same level of proven quality. See the Tevez-Dybala situation. Dybala right now is not the guarantee Tevez would have been, but you have to make changes at some stage and look at potential - and Dybala has the potential to be a great player for Juve for a long time.
Broadly speaking, I just think this was a mercato dictated by circumstance and so it often appeared rather haphazard.
It felt like Juve were constantly waiting for opportunities to come up and they did well to take advantage of many of them when they did (Khedira, Mandzukic, Sandro, Cuadrado - even Hernanes was a good option in the circumstances).
In some ways I understand being at the mercy of events as Juve are not strong enough to go out and spend the money others can to dictate what will happen in the market.
But I didn't like the impression that was given that there wasn't quite as clear a plan this summer as there has appeared to be in other years from Marotta.
Ultimately, though, Allegri has been given a strong squad of players for this season - still the strongest in Italy and it is up to him to put a team together.
I have sympathy for Allegri in how late some key signings have come, but by the time the next international break arrives in October (seven games between now and then), I'd expect him to have Juve in decent shape.
I wouldn't say 6.5-7/10 rating is pretty good as a mercato. I would however say it was a bit more about sustenance. Agree about the mercato being dictated by circumstance, but that has largely been our story under this management for the last five years. One could argue that it's turnover, one could argue that it's the budget, but I also have begun to feel that it's the ceiling of Marrotta and Paratici because of how things always end up. We go in for players who we claim we can afford, as we have in the past in Aguero, RVP, Draxler, but have never really gotten our primary target in any of those negotiations. It's making me wonder if deals like this are just the comfort zone/sweet spot for Beppe and Paratici. There's no right or wrong perhaps, and so far, it's worked to our advantage, but as things stand, as the team grows, I feel like we are going to have to push the envelope out of this comfort zone that we have been working within.
To give you an example, Beppe in his own words said hat Cuadrado was not the type of characteristics we were looking for, and then ended up closing the deal on him. Sure, great opportunity, cost us nothing but time, but then we went and sold the only other natural winger on the squad, which to me made little sense, and that didn't really strike me as an incoming move with any vision associated with it, in terms of thinking about it from the coach's perspective. I'm not hot on Morata or Dybala playing wide incidentally, but that I guess is my personal take on the matter.
I think five years is a good amount of time to see a pattern emerging, and it kind of has stuck it's head out nicely this year as well, wherein we prioritised opportunities over our pre-requisites. That to me is a bit of a problem we need to be a bit conscious about and to think that the pattern didn't change after we came from a season that was just about treble winning. While selling/underselling one of the biggest midfielders in the world, all without a proper plan in place.
The last cycle that ended, ironically was obviously not mapped out for the kind of success that we saw in that time. And we were growing faster than we first accounted for, but now? At this stage in the team and club's progression, if nothing else, I'd like to at least see a little more clarity, structure and direction in our strategic thinking and market outlook. That's probably where our biggest failure lies this year more than just deriving it all down to a singular player or position, if we were to encapsulate a macro view of what transpired over the last couple of months.