Sarni

We could have paid 24 million for Essien but we didn't want to. He wouldn't have gone cheaper even if Chelsea hadn't been interested. The year after Lyon sold Diarra to Real Madrid for a fee only slightly smaller than that, and Diarra is arguably a worse player.

There's nothing that suggests that we wouldn't be able to pay 24 million for a player we wanted. It happened with Rooney, we paid almost the same for both Hargreaves and Carrick, while Anderson and Nani were only slightly cheaper.

Paying 12 million for a youngster is nothing wrong. We paid the same for Ronaldo and when you ask me, he was just as proven as Obi Mikel when he joined Chelsea. Or even less proven, as Obi Mikel had a great U17 championship and a spectacular African Nations Cup under his belt. Moreover, he was the player Mourinho really wanted. I'd say 12 million was a fair price for him.

Then, another player we both wanted was Arjen Robben, who went for 10 million pounds. Whichever way you put it, we paid almost the same for Alan Smith a couple of months later. They hardly outbid us there, it was a screw-up on our side.

Then we got Ballack, who was offered better wages and was generally more keen on moving to Chelsea than United. Still, we could have paid him what Chelsea pay him easily. It's not like we don't have players on 100+ grand a week.

So, it's basically us who resign rather than Chelsea who make it impossible for us to sign all these players.