Yeah youll always lose your best player if a bigger clubs wants him, but it wasn't just that one player we lost. Alongside Andre Gray we then lost Douglas, Diagouraga, Dallas, Pritchard (loan), Odubajo and Tarkowski. That's 7 players who were all fairly key players for us, we didn't lose them because big money was thrown around in transfers, we lost them because they weren't signing new contracts and we could only previously afford to keep them on 3 year deals, often only extending by 1 or 2 years. Tarks and Pritchard were different as Tarkowski refused to play for us once Burnley got involved and Pritchard was just on loan, but the point is we now have most of our players on 4-5 year deals with extensions thrown in there as opposed to just a 2-3 year deal. So if we are going to lose Sergi Canos or Ryan Woods we'll either be in a position to say no or demand top dollar as opposed to just taking something rather than nothing.
Currently we have the best winger in the league, if we keep him he'll score a shitload and if we sell him we'll make a shitload and bring in someone who can make a similar impact on a long term contract. We're still waiting on Alan Judge to come back and that's not mentioning the likes of Canos, Jozefzoon and Vibe too.