As AC Milan put together a club-record cash-plus-players deal to sign Torino striker Andrea Belotti -- taking their summer spending close to the €250m mark -- Inter fans are restless, impatient and green with envy.

Coach Luciano Spalletti has told them not to fixate on their "cousins" and to ignore what they are doing in the transfer market as best they can.

"We're following our own path," he said at the club's high-altitude training camp in the Dolomites.

Inter finished behind Milan in Serie A last season but hold steadfast to the idea that their rivals have a bigger rebuilding job on their hands than they do. Milan, after all, are playing catch-up, making up for lost time after effectively sitting out the last two windows while their takeover was being completed. In net terms, Inter outspent their neighbours by €145m last season and it's easy to forget, amid the euphoria of the past few weeks, how depressing a state Milan were in this time last year.

Spalletti has made the point that Inter have a lot of talent on their books already, it's just some of the players they've bought -- Joao Mario, Geoffrey Kondogbia, and Gabigol -- "haven't done as well" as expected. A big part of Spalletti's job at San Siro will be coaxing them into playing to their potential. If he succeeds, each of them will feel like a new signing and after seeing what Spalletti achieved with Edin Dzeko at Roma last year, who went from flop to Serie A top scorer, Inter fans should be cautiously optimistic.

Spalletti isn't a miracle worker but, as he reminded journalists at his unveiling, he does come from the same village as Leonardo da Vinci. The Tuscan is an inventor. It's enough to recall that he is the one who started the False No. 9 craze all those years ago and has a knack of seeing things others don't.

His coaching ability is why ex-players like Christian Vieri believe Spalletti to be the "best signing of the transfer window in Italy."

Luca Toni is "very intrigued" by them. "I believe in Inter," he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. Views like theirs are counter-cultural at the moment and no matter how resourceful Spalletti is as a manager, his own claims that "I am no better than the others [who went before]" particularly "my friend," Stefano Pioli are telling. Call it humility or false modesty, Spalletti is self-aware enough to know, even with his sizeable ego, that his coaching acumen alone will not turn Inter from an under-performing seventh-place team into title contenders. He can only do so much. Value needs to be added elsewhere.

Spalletti walked away from Roma and Champions League football because Inter made him promises he expects them to keep. If they don't, Spalletti has made a promise of his own to tell the press all about it. Straitjacketed by financial fair play until June 30 which required Inter to raise €30m, the club accomplished that through the sale of Ever Banega and a whole host of kids, rather relying on cashing in on Ivan Perisic.

No longer obliged to sell, it has strengthened their bargaining position with Manchester United and explains why Inter are refusing to budge from their top dollar asking price for the Croatia international. The windfall from that and other anticipated exits like those involving Stevan Jovetic, Andrea Ranocchia and possibly even Kondogbia will go toward covering what Inter have spent so far and the loss of potential revenue from another year without Champions League football.

Inter's owners, Suning, make between €40-50bn a year a year but, unlike Milan, their hands remain tied by the settlement agreement their predecessor, Erik Thohir, entered into with UEFA in 2015-16. The statement signing fans have been told to expect by the media hasn't yet arrived. Spalletti is not Antonio Conte. Milan Skriniar is not Leonardo Bonucci. Borja Valero and Matias Vecino are not Nainggolan and Naby Keita.

Top targets across the board -- at least those reported in the press -- have eluded Suning and Inter, and the profiles of the players who have arrived so far would perhaps still have underwhelmed even if Milan had stayed quiet this summer. Which isn't of course to say Inter have bought badly.

While improvements are needed, Inter Milan also need more from their existing players. Claudio Villa - Inter/Inter via Getty Images

What they're seeking to achieve in this window is clear and that's to make the team more fluid in its build-up play and possession game. Skriniar is ambidextrous and has excellent feet. Walter Sabatini, Suning's director of sport, is an excellent judge of centre-backs: see Marquinhos, Medhi Benatia, Kostas Manolas and Antonio Rudiger. Matias Vecino is a long overdue replacement for Thiago Motta, and Borja Valero brings the on-field intelligence and generalship Inter have lacked since they let Esteban Cambiasso go.

Spalletti wants another "three or four" signings before the market is done. Vecino counts as one. Perisic's replacement will be another, with Inter asking United for Antony Martial to be included in the deal while simultaneously moving for Lazio's Keita Balde Diao. Juventus' decision to pull out of the transfer of Patrik Schick after Sampdoria refused to restructure the deal in light of issues emerging from his medical has led Inter to make a move for the Czech who was the revelation of Serie A last season.

The area that really needs addressing, though, remains Inter's flaky back line. Irrespective of the addition of Skriniar and Dalbert, the right-back Inter are expected to sign from Nice, it still feels in need of corrective surgery particularly when you compare it with those of Juventus, Milan and Napoli. The back line has so often let Inter down in recent years and even with the team expected to defend better as a collective under Spalletti and control the play more now Borja Valero has joined, it requires something of a leap to put your faith in some of the personnel at his disposition. The left-backs, for instance, are entirely what you'd expect from a seventh-place team rather than one of Inter's history and tradition. It's remarkable Yuto Nagatomo is still at the club six-and-a-half years after his move from Cesena.

Full-back remains a problem area, with Yuto Nagatomo failing to convince. Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

For now, Spalletti's status as Inter's best new signing goes unchallenged. A slow-burn transfer window has still to catch fire and capture fan imagination. But Inter's buys, unlike a number of Milan's, all have Serie A experience and won't need time to settle. Out of Europe, this isn't the first time a new Inter manager has had the advantage of being able to focus solely on the league. Others haven't capitalised in the way Conte famously did at Juventus [and Chelsea]. But one can't imagine Spalletti letting the extra time on the training pitch go to waste. The team also dramatically under-performed last year and is better than seventh suggests.

Maybe Inter are being underestimated and as Spalletti likes to say, the grass isn't always greener on the other side. All that glitters isn't gold. And while Milan have everybody's attention at the moment, the hashtag employed by their rivals could ultimately prove as ominous as intended: Inter is coming.