Why We Don’t Need To Match City’s Spending

Another transfer window has now closed and it’s another where many Manchester United fans have been left feeling disappointed due to the apparent lack of transfer activity at Old Trafford.

Chris Smalling has arrived from Fulham, as well as Javier Hernandez, Marnick Vermijl and Bebe. Players that left old Trafford were Ben Foster, Zoran Tosic, Tom Heaton, Ron-Robert Zieler, David Gray and Craig Cathcart. This gives us a net spend this Summer of £10,350,000, contrasted with last season which was -£64,500,000, mainly down to the massive -£80,000,000 received from Real Madrid for Ronaldo.

The big question is: Has Sir Alex done enough?

The main area everybody seems to think we need to strengthen is our midfield. We’ve been linked with every man and his dog this Summer, and the preceding three Summers, but Sir Alex seems confident enough to stick with what he’s got. Anderson is coming back to fitness, Michael Carrick started well against Chelsea but has strangely remained on the sidelines since. Paul Scholes is showing us what we’ll miss when he retires and Darren Fletcher is keeping things ticking over, despite not being his usual self from last season. Owen Hargreaves is….Owen Hargreaves.

Would our squad have benefitted from a Sneidjer or an Ozil? Of course it would. That goes without saying. But it’s not in United’s nature to go out spending tens of millions of pounds on established players. of course there have been exceptions, like the £30M+ paid for Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov, but on the whole we’ve kept a nice balance of bringing in good players as well as developing youngsters like Darren Fletcher, Jonny Evans and of course the trio of Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes.

It would be great if I woke one morning to see we’d signed a star player, but I’m usually fairly sure that we won’t and if that does happen, I’m confident that Sir Alex knows exactly what he’s doing. When Chelsea bought the league when Abramovich took over, he didn’t respond by bringing in lots of star players to fight fire with fire. He signed Michael Carrick to partner Scholes in the middle and we proceeded to win the league three seasons in a row. And now that Manchester City are trying to buy the league, I don’t expect Sir Alex to go on a spending spree to keep us challenging for the title. And unless he’s got a secret stash of business credit cards he won’t be able to afford it anyway if the Glazer’s keep siphoning money from the club, but that’s another topic I’ll leave for another time.

The point is, as United fans, who have been spoilt with success for the last two decades, we should put our faith in the man that has made all of that success possible. It’s hard not to glance over with green eyes at City and their billions from time to time, but if there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the years it’s that money can’t buy class. Class that running all the way through Manchester United. If we win a trophy this year it will be through hard work, determination and the winning attitude that’s drilled into every player who steps out onto the Old Trafford pitch and it’ll be Sir Alex Ferguson who leads them there, without the help of a blank chequebook.

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