Do these transfers indicate that Manchester United’s philosophy is buying ready-made players?

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According to the critics, by replacing youth products with proven, established stars, Manchester United have joined the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, and PSG in spending outrageous sums to buy talent and are therefore gravitating away from their tradition.

So, what at all is this ‘tradition’? Apparently ‘The Manchester United way’ is a hypothesis based on some simple beliefs laid down by Sir Matt Busby and later embellished by Sir Alex Ferguson. These ideals can roughly be boiled down to playing entertaining, attacking football with a commitment to self-producing new talent and allowing brilliant footballers to express themselves fully.

Many argue that United’s success has always been founded on the work rate and commitment of lesser stars and functional heroes (mainly from the academy) who heaved the club to titles, cups and European glory with their work rate and passion for the badge. However, in a day and age when our main domestic and European rivals are literally over-spending to get great talents, do we have to sit down, fold our hands and rely on our academy players even if they are not good enough?

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While fans enjoy talking up the success of the club’s academy, especially in contrast to the petro-dollar funded glory of the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea, the harsh reality is that the majority of youth graduates do not make it at a top club like Manchester United. For every member of the ‘Class of 92’, there have been countless others who have been shipped out.

Notably, since 1991, Manchester United have made close to £160 million from the sales of academy players. Despite the romance of a local lad playing for his team, football is still about results, and even Manchester United have released many of their youth players.

Sir Alex was never afraid to splash the cash when they needed to, or even to reinforce and refresh an already successful group of players. He never solely relied on their academy for youth but signed exciting talents. The club have always competed for big names and spent money when necessary. Manchester United have broken the British transfer record with Denis Law, Bryan Robson, Andy Cole, and more recently, Juan Sebastian Veron, Rio Ferdinand and Angel Di Maria. So the possible re-signing of ex-academy prospect Paul Pogba will hardly be a first, although it will stick in the memory if he is made the world’s first £100 million footballer.

Like Luke Shaw, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney came to Manchester United as expensive teenagers and grew into world-class players at Old Trafford. For Ander Herrera, Eric Bailly, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, read Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra. Youth has always been trusted at Old Trafford, and this faith in youth is ingrained in the philosophy of the club.

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People often forget that under Van Gaal, the likes of Tyler Blackett, Paddy McNair, Andreas Perreira, Adnan Januzaj, James Wilson, Marcus Rashford, Guillermo Varela, Timothy Fosu Mensah, and others were given the chance to impress. How many teams have infused so many academy players into their starting line-up in the past years?

Aside that, this criticism are not fair and a bit biased considering the fact that in the last few seasons, the club has shockingly under-invested in the transfer market. The club ‘got away’ for so long with shocking under-investment until last summer solely due to the genius of Sir Alex Ferguson.

The disastrous era of David Moyes highlighted the folly of such a transfer policy. As a result, investment was necessary, and Ed Woodward in the past two years has ‘delivered’. Finally, the club showed ambition befitting of their stature. Manchester United acted with a swagger, making a mockery of those who said the club would struggle to attract good players without European football including Brendan Rodgers.

Even Barcelona; who are probably able to boast the best academy in the world, have spent more than €648.35 million since the summer of 2003 (when Joan Laporta took over as president). Since, the Catalans’ net total for transfer spending stood at €429.61 million (this value is from 2013), and of course excludes the transfers of Luis Suarez, Rakitic, Arda Turan and Aleix Vidal, so the true figure may even dwarf this.

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With Manchester United still in transition, there is no place in the team for passengers. Long term solutions are required. With the exception of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Bastian Schweinsteiger who are or were exceptional cases, all other transferred players are under the age of 26. I would end by saying that United have always supplemented youth talents with well established names. However, this is managed carefully so that it does not get in the way of one of the central tenets in Sir Matt and Sir Alex’s blueprint for the club: develop and trust in youth.

Featured Image: All rights reserved by Colin Vassallo