SER19
Full Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2008
- Messages
- 12,907
Brilliantly put. Not sure why people are so adamant on rewriting history, much less correlating our success with how city have done it. We were out spent by many for much of the 90s then people say oh that's because of the class of 92. Eh, yes exactly. Why would that be a detracting pointI just posted this in another thread, but it's incredibly relevant here. In the ten years between Sir Alex being appointed and the end of the 95/96 season - which finished with United's third title and second double in four years - City spent more money on transfers than we did. They then got relegated... Loads of clubs outspent us on player transfers in the 90s (Blackburn, Liverpool, Newcastle), partly because we were spending so much money redeveloping Old Trafford. The key thing that made us so insanely successful was Sir Alex.
Then money started really flooding the game around the millennium, and we were best placed to hoover it all up and spend it on Juan Sebastian Veron. Only at that point did we start dramatically outspending our rivals (after Leeds went bust, at least), and we were well on our way to becoming England's Bayern.
Then Roman happened, and Abu Dhabi FC is just a further development along the same lines. The fact that Fergie kept us competitive up until his retirement is probably his greatest achievement, but people were so used to us winning at that point that it went mostly unremarked upon how mad it was that we kept winning the league ahead of two clubs with significantly deeper pockets.
edit:
This is a good recent article which demolishes any myth about us buying our success.
How anyone could read that and suppose we are similar to city is just beyond me