I've had this same opinion Weaste; Veron was brought in at the wrong time, United were strong and weren't in decline in 2001. We ended up losing Stam and ultimately the team tinkering cost us losing to Arsenal, but the midfield was strong.
It made perfect sense at the time. We'd been relying on Keane, who'd already had a couple of bad injuries, to do the work of two men next to Scholes in a very attacking midfield that was necessary because we had good but not amazing strikers.
So, bring in a playmaker who sits deep next to Keane, taking some of the defensive burden off him as well as orchestrating moves. Free Scholesy to push up and concentrate on providing for a genuinely world-class centre forward.
The only problem was, it didn't work. Veron never really settled, Scholes was arguably better timing his runs from deep, and a beautifully balanced midfield was disrupted. But that's the way of the world, just cos something doesn't work as planned doesn't mean the plan was wrong.
As for Weaste, he wanted to bring in Ruben Baraja...