In Fergie's reign during the PL, Man Utd only outspent other teams in just three out of 21 seasons.
It's one of those facts that may seem astonishing in the football world of today, but for those of us who lived through these times, it makes perfect sense. Firstly, Ferguson's formative years were the second half of the 80s. By the time of the PL's inaugural season, SAF had figured things out and United were ready to challenge for the title. So, it was more a case of a few final brush strokes than throwing money away to see how many holes we can plug.
And when the time finally came to breathe new life into the squad and reinvent the formula, we were blessed with one of the finest crops of local talents emerging through the ranks. This provided us with stability and allowed us, for about a decade, to watch from a safe distance the repercussions of the Bosman Ruling that completely changed the football market and saw the foreign players in England's top-flight competition becoming the majority by 2004 from numbering just 13 in 1992.
Toward the tail-end of Fergie's reign, United possessed enough fear factor, more so at OT, to get the job done. We were the team to beat. Add to this that in the period from Mourinho's sacking right up until Pep and Klopp came to the island, the overall quality of the league wasn't something to write home about.