Moura and Hazard are exactly my point. We were in for them but it was far from Fergie's natural habitat. He simply would not cater to agents and go that extra mile for players of that profile the way he would have someone like Keane or Rooney. I did mention Veron as an exception and maybe Ruud. The rest were far from established the way Silva, Agüero, Yaya, Moura, Hazard, ... were whereas Hargraeves was an English player who wanted back.Are you completely forgetting that we were in for Hazard and Moura but lost out on both deals due to agent fees? Or that we also bought Veron, Ruud, Hargreaves, Anderson Stam and Ronaldo? I have no idea what your point is but we bought big talents from the continent both well known and unknown gems like Park, Vidic and Evra. We just completely shit the bed acting like a big club again during the post-Ronaldo period from 2009-2011, a lot of that having to do with the Glazers damaging debt they put onto the club. We should’ve been investing heavily to replace Ronaldo to stay a force in Europe, that’s what big clubs do, but we sat on our hands while City, PSG, Madrid and Barca loaded up. We fell behind and now we are where we are partially due to that lack of ambition.
We had monopoly over the British market in the '90s and early '00s. That is why we always set the benchmark with Keane, Cantona, Cole, Sheringham, Yorke, Rooney, Berbatov and that one last hurrah with Van Persie. We never competed for the top quality in Spain or Italy on a regular basis. Our network was old school which needed to be revolutionized when other PL clubs started having money and started investing in a more modern approach with transfers. It was not until Woodward and his Disney land vision that we started making contacts with big name agents so we can be in for that profile of players.