You're asking the pertinent questions and I can understood fans being sceptical about the club, when it comes to recruitment. But I think before we pass judgement on our recruitment structure in it's present state, we must delve into the past and attempt to understand the transition from Fergie to Moyes and the structure Moyes inherited when he arrived at the club and the development/evolution of this recruitment structure to the present day.
And it's well documented that Moyes inherited a structure on the football side that was severely lacking when it comes to detail and thoroughness in identifying players. We had one full-time scout (Jim Lawlor) and all the scout reports were stored in his head according to reports, instead of a database, which should've been the normal procedure at any club.
So Moyes attempted to rectify the recruitment issues by bringing in a very competent technical scout, called James Smith and also Moyes attempts to lure John Murtough from his role as the head of Elite performance with the Premier League. Smith arrives pretty quickly but Murtough doesn't arrive at the club until the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. Murtough's role is to restructure the whole setup from the scouting/youth/ data analytics to bring it in-line with the modern game.
Moyes loses his job in April, 2014 and Man City waste no time in poaching James Smith from us. And they (City) could do this to us because we didn't really have a structure on the recruitment side that could make use of multiple scouts and provide those scouts with optimal working conditions for them to excel at their work. Man City, Liverpool, Leicester etc could do this, and hence had better recruitment. And it wasn't because they were doing anything out of the ordinary either.
Murtough carried on with his duties at the club which were independent from the first team and the manager. And he had formed a strategy to develop the club at youth/structural/data analytics levels, which was beginning to take shape around 2016. We went through the LVG debacle because LVG made a mess of recruitment and was signing players like Rojo because they impressed him in a World Cup semi-final. And those were his words to MUTV after we'd signed Rojo. It was a complete and utter scatter gun approach to recruitment and decisions were being made by LVG on the basis of one game. The failure of the manager being the DoF was in full swing.
The Premier League proven Mourinho arrives, and again tells reporter's (Like LVG) that he's given a list of of targets to the board for them to sign for him. They sign various targets for him in the first few seasons, which include two CBs that are signed on the say so of Mourinho's independent scouts, according to Jason Burt of the Telegraph. Burt went on to say on TV (I posted the link at the time ) that every signing that was made during Mourinho's time at the club was his signing and his signing alone with the aid of his personal recruitment staff.
And in 2017, it was reported that United had completed the restructuring process when it comes to the scouting network, which included the data analytics team. And the following year, in 2018, a transfer committee was created with Marcel Bout, Jim Lawlor and Mick Court given veto power. And they were backed up by 60 full-time scouts, 300 casual scouts and the data analytics team. Which was a huge contrast from the time Moyes arrived at the club and we had a non existent data analytics department and one full-time scout. Below is what Daniel Taylor reported in 2018 about the transfer committee vetoing Mourinho and his targets.
Daniel Taylor: "Manchester United did not follow through with some of José Mourinho’s transfer targets because of misgivings about the players he had identified and a decision, from the top of the club, that he should not be allowed to get his way if it meant potentially wasting tens of millions of pounds on a short-term fix".
"To Mourinho’s intense irritation, United’s conclusion was that in most cases he had targeted defenders who were no better than those they already had and who, in today’s inflated market, could conceivably have cost upwards of £70m without vastly improving the team."
"United believe Van Dijk’s fee will not seem disproportionate within a year but, with the prices currently so inflated, the club do not want to pay similar amounts unless their targets are at a certain level – higher, plainly, than Maguire or Alderweireld."
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...united-veto-jose-mourinho-wishlist-cash-fears
Woodward confirmed the above in a interview with Andy Mitten.
I will return to give my opinion on your questions a little later.
Just quote a couple of your existing posts 
