That's really just a damning indictment of our scouts. Arguably the one and only signing in the post Fergie era to have an indisputably positive effect on the team and they tried to block it. Where were they when we needed them to block the signings of Bailly, Lukaku, Antony, Van Der Beek and Sancho?
Bruno has been a ‘successful’ signing in many respects. But in a temporary sort of fashion. What Adnan has mentioned is that the signing lacked longer term consideration about the development of the team. Bruno has helped us to win games. But he doesn’t really help us ‘play better’. And ultimately, he/we won’t win
enough games to win big titles anyway, not without actually addressing what we need to do to actually ‘play well’ and like maybe try being the better team on the pitch in the majority of football matches we play, as opposed to the second best/equal best that we are more often than not, irrespective of result.
If we had approached the market with a view of how we were going to develop a team that could dominate games as opposed to how were we going to win enough points to get into the top 4, we’d have been better off long term. In the short term, Bruno came and helped us in to the CL, and has invariably done so since then, but as a team, we have a clear ceiling on us. In comparison, Arsenal took the more patient route, and finished 8th back to back while building a team on the right foundations.
One of the big problems post-Fergie with all of our managers is that no matter where we had finished the season before, they all approached the summer with the mentality of trying to sign a big player or two that would get us right back challenging for the title the following season. Especially earlier on post-Fergie. After all, we had only won the league a couple of years prior. So I don’t think they saw the reality of where we were, it was always ‘add Di Maria/Falcao‘ or ‘add Pogba/Zlatan’ and go and try and win the league next season. The short-termist in me was happy with the uptick in form when Bruno joined. But in reality, the team needed more than just a ‘shot in the arm’.