But it's only a gamble in the sense that every signing's a gamble. Due to the misstep of the EPPP, Premier League clubs have an abundance of talent that won't make it in the top flight - at least immediately - and that's where we step in to swoop them up. Mix that with our scouting of the lower leagues (Dunkley, Atkinson etc.) and our knowledge of NI (Whyte, Sykes, Cooper) then I don't think it's a hoping scenario.
We could sign a squad of journeymen in their late 20s-early 30s who are looking for a club to settle at for a few years and raise a family, but they'd be worth a lot less money if we wanted to sell players and generate revenue for the club.
It's the trade-off we have that we sell off one or two of our players every season to allow us to keep attracting these very talented young players. Simply put, if we didn't have this model in place, we wouldn't have attracted our 'best players' to sign in the first place and wouldn't have as good as squad as we currently do.
Also, I don't even think it is our 'best players', because it's not like we still don't have talent in our squad even with the departures in recent years. It's not like we haven't replaced Nelson with Moore, Dickie with Atkinson, Baptiste with McGuane etc. The squad is full of talent, and to say we're selling our best ones every single transfer window actually does a disservice to the talented players who are still at the club.