Agreed. This is the big issue here.
We're not going to move forward as a team if this is the way we're going to operate. Or at best, it's a "2 steps forward, 1 step back" kind of thing, and progress will be too slow and not secure enough.
Ginter, Bremer, whoever else is linked to us - they need to be signed TO COMPETE with the existing trio, not to replace any of them. While I like Bremer a lot (Ginter less so), neither of them is as good as de Vrij right now. Simply replacing de Vrij with one of them, or God forbid Skriniar, would be utterly detrimental on the pitch unless we luck out and they rapidly develop into a world class player.
They would, however, be a significant upgrade over the likes of Ranocchia, D'Ambrosio, Kolarov or Dimarco. Currently, if one of our starting CB's is injured, the gap in quality between the starter and replacement is simply too large. Ranocchia has been good as a de Vrij sub, but lets be honest - he's almost exclusively played against extremely weak opponents.
Every good team should aim for having multiple options for the same position, of comparable quality.* That is how you compete across the marathon of a league season, and it gives you cards to play in a tight, knockout format tournament against elite opponents in the CL. We're going to be regularly smashed in the round of 16, or exit in the group stage, if our bench options remain vastly inferior to our starting XI. Teams like Sarri's Napoli and Spalletti's Roma were ultimately unable to cross the finish line largely because their bench players simply weren't comparable to those of juventus.
*Realistically, it is extremely difficult to build a squad like that under these constraints. We're going to run into the same problem if we adopt this strategy of selling our starters and replacing them with hypothetically "comparable", low-cost options. Or do we just have to hope and pray that the rest of the league remains retarded until we recover financially? Fuck off.