£75.15m before performance related add-ons
Cavani
Telles
Van De Beek
Diallo
Pellistri
Bit of optimism perhaps?
Ultimately we'll only know in a few years, and I hope you're proven right but I think '5 players for the price of a Lukaku' is an incredibly generous reading of the situation...
For a start, Lukaku is an odd starting point for a conversation about United finding value considering we sold him at a loss and when you take into account the loss on the transfer fee, their wages and agent fees, we've taken a big financial hit to be in an arguably weaker position with Cavani.
Then you get onto the other players we brought in and whilst I hope they all do well and become first team quality, they're all either squad options or for the future. Despite glaring holes, we've had a window where we haven't strengthened our starting eleven whilst our rivals have all strengthened theirs. That in and of itself has to be considered a failure, especially considering where we finished last season and the objective for this year. If we haven't improved our starting eleven and all of our rivals have, then you'd expect them to close the gap and surpass us and for us to finish outside the top 4.
If this window happened in 2001 when we were so far ahead of the chasing pack and just needed to solidify our dominance for the future then I think United fans would be more positive about it.
But as the situation currently exists, we needed to do far more than we did, and its difficult to give the club the benefit of the doubt and praise them for astutely signing squad and youth players given the woeful outcome of recent recruitment and coming off the embarrassing high profile and public failure to land our main target this window.