"Two world-class signings," David Gill promised Manchester United supporters in 2006. The incomings were Michael Carrick and Tomasz Kuszczak.
Carrick had a great career at United, seeing it all and winning the lot. United paid nearly double the opening £10million offer they made to Tottenham, with Sir Alex Ferguson enduring a negotiation process with Daniel Levy that was "more painful than my hip replacement".
That deal came in the midst of a golden era of recruitment for United, sparked by Wayne Rooney's defection down the East Lancs Road in 2004. In the summer and winter transfer windows in 2005-06, United signed Edwin van der Sar, Ji-sung Park, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra for £19.5m. Carrick, Van der Sar, Vidic and Evra started in all three Champions League finals United reached between 2008-11 and Park in two.
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Ferguson's hit rate for out-and-out successes subsided significantly in his twilight years. Even the 2007 intake - United's best ever summer window - have caveats. Owen Hargreaves and Anderson peaked in their first seasons, Carlos Tevez left after two years and though Nani developed into a higher calibre winger, it was fleeting. Nani's Old Trafford career ended with his return to Sporting for a season-long loan before United accepted peanuts from Fenerbahce.
Dimitar Berbatov, the headline arrival in 2008, was so polarising he was dropped from the 2011 Champions League final squad even though he was the team's top scorer. Berbatov was afforded a meagre 11 starts in his final season, filling in at centre half in the League Cup stroll against Leeds United.
Berbatov, Nani and Anderson are deified as they were members of title-winning squads and the former two, in particular, were classy conjurers. Hargreaves donned United garb back at Carrington for an interview last month.
Antonio Valencia, United's most expensive addition in 2009 for a prudent £16.5m, had a fine career at Old Trafford and is fondly remembered. He also requested to revert back to his old squad number of 25 after being cowed by the '7' in Ferguson's final season.
Valencia was a woeful captain in his last, injury-plagued term. United ignored the one-year extension option in his contract and released him in 2019.
It is easy to be dewy-eyed about Valencia, Javier Hernandez, Robin van Persie etc. yet Ferguson's hits had some misses. Literally. Van Persie decided which side of Manchester the Premier League trophy would be housed in 2013 but his two-month drought coincided with a crushing Champions League elimination by Real Madrid and a feeble FA Cup collapse against Chelsea..
Van Persie had the odd great moment under David Moyes (the heroic hat-trick in the comeback against Olympiakos) but he, too, was let go a year early and ended up at the Fenerbahce retirement home.
Punters tend to reflect on United's wretched recruitment post-Ferguson but the list of signings from his final campaign alone prove the problem dates back to his time: Van Persie, Shinji Kagawa, Nick Powell, Alexander Buttner, Angelo Henriquez and Wilfried Zaha.
Kagawa and Buttner were gone after two years, Powell had nine games before he was released, Zaha played four times for the club and Henriquez never played for the club.
Ferguson (and Ed Woodward) inflicted Phil Jones on United fans for a staggering 12 years, Michael Owen was considering Stoke or Hull before fellow horse racing addict Ferguson invited him over for breakfast. There was Gabriel Obertan in 2009 and Bebe in 2010, signings that would have made Alfredo di Stefano do a double take.
2009 signalled the shift under the Glazers. United refused to reinvest the world record £80m they received from Real Madrid for Cristiano Ronaldo. The dwindling ambition was so brazen that the perma-crock Owen took Ronaldo's squad number.
Ferguson stopped signing central midfielders and became the Glazer family's mouthpiece. He complained about "no value in the market" and "kamikaze spending". Nouveau riche City signed David Silva and Sergio Aguero, talents United had an eye on but turned away from.
Hernandez, at £6m, represented value in 2010. He poached nine winning goals as United won an unprecedented 19th title and reached the Champions League final in 2011. Chris Smalling, at £10m, represented reasonable value before he relocated permanently to Rome in 2020. Ashley Young was a solid signing and David de Gea a great goalkeeper.
The pathetic parsimony from that period caught up with United AD (after dominance). After the £30.75m club-record arrival of Berbatov on deadline night in September 2008, United did not break the £30m barrier for a signing until Juan Mata in January 2014. That was an appeasement buy in a month that began with three consecutive defeats.
Still, it is not how much you spend but how you spend it. Woodward never cottoned on to that after his chastening first year. Moyes, in thrall to his Scottish kingmaker, daren't offend Ferguson and barely altered the squad. Louis van Gaal was not as subservient and the number of outgoings broke double figures in 2014, all of them Ferguson buys.
During his one press engagement in Manchester, Dan Ashworth stressed that a manager is not solely responsible for a signing. In Ferguson's time, he was. History has been kind to those who had a Premier League winner's medal placed over their head and embarked on open-top bus parades. The reality is many of those players were inconsistent.
Van Gaal felt the squad had to be gutted in 2014. Then he misspent wildly. Jose Mourinho's recruitment record was more respectable before Woodward started to veto his recommendations. Recruitment became more collaborative under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and then United danced to Erik ten Hag's Dutch-centric tune.
They have spent £1.83bn under the six permanent post-Ferguson managers (a new stadium would cost at least £2bn). Only Bruno Fernandes and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have been genuine successes and Ibrahimovic's curtailed second season has been quietly airbrushed from history.
Every penny has to count under the new penny-pinchers about to lay off up to 200 more staff members. This season could be the first time United have failed to qualify for the Champions League in consecutive campaigns since they re-entered the competition in 1993.
United have already paid more than £1bn in debt interest under the Glazers. It was Gill who said "Debt is the road to ruin" before he, like Ferguson, sided with the Glazers.
