3 years in a 20 year period. Hardly buying the league is it. We didn’t even win the league one of those years.
Back then you didn't need to buy the league in the way we mean it now. You were the Bayern of the league, you won constantly and snapped up players from weaker teams when it suited. You won the league 7 times in 11 years and dominated everything.
92/93: Took Cantona off Leeds
93/94: Roy Keane from Forest
94/95: Andy Cole from Newcastle, and David May from Blackburn
95/96: Coton from City
96/97: Brought in 4 foreigners (Solskjaer, Cruyff, Paborsky and Johnsen)
97/98: Berg from Blackburn, Sheringham from Spurs
98/99: Yorke from Villa and Berg from abroad
Even if those players didn't all work out for you, they were generally hugely important to the teams you took them from. After that you brought in a lot more foreign players, but you still had time to nick Ferdinand and Smith off Leeds, Rooney from Everton and Saha and Van de Sar from Fulham.
My point being that this idea that Man Utd were somehow totally different and won everything much more cleanly than teams today is frankly unmitigated horseshit that keeps getting repeated year after year. For fans of other teams from back in that time it's almost insulting to hear. United were a powerhouse and fair play to you for it, but it wasn't any different really to today, it was just dominance expressed in a different fashion.