United spent twice as much on Lindelof as Leicester did Maguire, while Robertson cost Liverpool £8m; both would have been assets to Mourinho this season.
There are an abundance of players in the lower leagues now who have the talent to step up into the Premier League; James Maddison, for example, is a Coutinho clone and would add lacking flare to the midfield, but the club will rather spend on Milinkovic-Savic. Lewis Cook has been putting in Premier League performances comparable to the ones Fred has in the Ukrainian pub league, but the club will go for the Brazilian because it’s deemed sexier; that epitomises why the club has failed to win the league in the past 5 years, despite spending huge amounts to acquire exotic named mercenaries.
The club under Mourinho and Woodward is at odds with its own identity, hence the relative failure - those two will prioritise Sandro, but Sirs Matt and Alex would have taken great pride in acquiring and developing Tierney.
Buying fullbacks from Serie A is moronic - Darmian was seen as bordering world class at Torino, while Kolarov was just named left back of the season there, as he was before his dubious spell at City. Sandro is another risk, like Maicon was when he flopped at City after being seen as the best rightback in Europe during his time in Italy, barring being rinsed by a Premier League winger in Bale.
Tierney is the best, most compatible fullback United could acquire this summer.
Safer to buy known/great/world class players in their eyes, since Mourinho is not good at or cares about developing players. And then the supporters can't complain about them not buying players of quality. As opposed to signing an "unproven/unknown" player like Tierney from a weaker league, and if he fails to deliver then Woody/mourinho gets all the blame. And people say they are cheap/clueless/can't attrack big players and so on.
Furthermore Mourinho and Woody seems to think there is a direct correlation between playing good for a big club/big league automatically makes you better than playing exceptionally for a weaker team in a smaller league. Thus making the players you propose not good enough, despite their apparent quality. People do not seem to understand that playing in a weaker team would make it easier for good players to stand out,
but would also affect the better players negatively. Bad passes, technique, movement etc. While playing in a good team, would make the bad players seem better than they are. Good passes, system, and general help from their players.
Lets take a CB pairing as an example: CB1 is a world class CB, playing in a pairing with CB2 who is a complete cretin. CB1 would not only focus on his own tasks in defence, he would also have to make up for all the stupid mistakes made by CB2, taking away some of his focus on his own tasks. And the overall impression of CB1 would decrease. CB2 would, on the other hand, get help from the superior CB2. And the general impression of him as a player would be better than he actually is.
On Tierney as a player: Same impression as i had with Van Dijk(Could see that despite playing in a weaker team/league he had the individual abilities and was pure class. And for other people to realise this he had to prove himself in Southampton). Tierney is almost as superior to his teammates as Van Dijk was at Celtic. Tierney is more than good enough to play as a starting LB for us next season, but i fear that we will not buy him because he plays in a "weaker team/league" thus he can't be as good as he seems to be.