They don't actually have to, it's an erroneous assumption. The likes of Dortmund and Atletico are testament to the fact that you don't need to spend hundreds of millions or provide €200 million per annum 'partnerships' to your club to fund incredible transfer sprees. There are ways to progressively and organically build up your image than upsetting the whole transfer market and blowing the whole monetary scale out of proportion.
To address the second point, I'd like to raise a broader socio-economical issue. This isn't about defending United or essentially trivial football rivalries or trying to diminish other clubs. Feck that. The core issue is addressing the stupid money involved in football, especially through the last decade. In some ways, it will directly or indirectly affect relatively insignificant pleb 'consumers' like me or you. Every time a club pays €60-70 million for a player, they are forced to recover that from their revenue, be it marketing (Nike raising replica prices, lowering wages for workers, Sky raising subscription rates) or other means, and the burden is ultimately borne by the common man, even those financed by Sheikhs and Oligarchs. It's a really sad reflection on modern football and the soul-less, apathetic, money spinning entity it has become.
