And at the same time we had signed Lukaku, Pogba, Lindelof and Bailly, all below 25.
We had too much youngsters in the attack that we actually need some top senior players there. Signing another youngster while we have the likes of Martial, Rashford and Lingard doesn't make any sense.
In my opinion we ended up buying the younger players where we already had young players. As good as lukaku was at Everton - I didn't think we needed a under 25 year striker when we had Rashford & martial especially for 85mil; an older one I can understand. Lindelof came when we had bailly, tuenzebe, TFM around that area alongside the still relatively young age of the rest of our CB's. Only Pogba & one of our CB's we bought as a young player has really filled a significant gap in the squad even shown by the fact that even though lukaku doesn't score the players around him still does. Then on the other hand mkhitarayan filled a role where he is being outshone by mata & Lingard. Again; not a significant gap in our squad.
Anyway I understand the benefit of experienced players; but looking at how Rashford & martial have been treated ever since the introduction of ibrahimpvic & then the slightly older lukaku - there's a difference to jesus sharing games with aguero to our approach. If we had bought perisic - one or even both of martial & Rashford have a significant chance of being singled out of the wings as they did at ST because it shows the managers inability to utilise the type of player at his disposal rather than the players ability to be effective.
If we had a choice to buy perisic, Martial or Rashford this January - we know who he would buy to supply lukaku. If last summer we had the choice to buy lukaku, Martial or Rashford as strikers again we know who he would have bought.
Jose's frustration comes from his inability to build a title winning squad that
he himself can manage but that does not mean that the players we have are useless - getting the best out of certain players in our squad in the year & a half he has had would have made the job easier if he was flexible. However he has spent the first year trying to get the best out of ibrahimpvic & this year trying to get the best out of lukaku - this had ended up with us needing more signings all across the pitch (for example we might need a winger on each side on top of needing a fullback on each side to get the best out of a lone striker).
On the other hand - If he had tried to get the best out of martial & Rashford for example by possibly playing the 352, we could have upgraded 2 wingbacks by now, 2/3 midfielders, one defender & one striker in an approach of improving the squad we started with rather than completely replacing everyone to get the best out of Jose himself & the very few type of players he can manage.
We have bought 7 players or so with still significant gaps all across our squad - more gaps than significant starters because Jose wanted to start from the very beginning rather than building on what he had. Pep on the other hand has admittedly a better squad when he came in - yet he utilised his squad by making silva & de bryune in to midfielders players like Delph at LB, stuck with fernandinh0, otamendi, kompany and upgraded on the weaknesses he had left in the squad. All the whilst we need a new RW, Possibly a proper LW, another 2 CM or even 3, maybe another striker to replace ibrahimpvic & another Am to replace mkhitarayan, another fullback on either side all the whilst he has spent 300 mil on things that haven't improved/didn't need improving bar 2players.
Though I don't know much about DOF, this is where they might add some benefit.