So far this summer Manchester United has already paid out £80 million in transfer fees with more big money more complicated signings yet to arrive at Old Trafford, while Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has so far just spent £11 million on Petr Cech.
The 65-year-old Frenchman thinks that the United board has been impressed with Dutchman Louis van Gaal’s list of achievements at Barcelona and Bayern Munich by buying player to win titles, and that the club has now ditched their long-running policy of bringing young players up through the ranks unlike what he is doing at Arsenal.
“We want to continue to combine stronger financial resources with faith in our philosophy and policy,” Wenger said as quoted by The Times.
“That means we want to continue to give chances to young players and build the players from inside our club with our culture.
“Afterwards, if we can buy the exceptional players, we can compete today. But that will not be the basis of our policy.
“Most of the clubs who have been successful are clubs who have done that well. You can take Barcelona or Man United, who had a generation and built their success on players who came from within.
“These are our values and it is our DNA and it’s important we keep that.
“With United’s success they have created huge financial resources and today there is no patience for them to continue to do what they did — and they have the financial resources to go with a different policy.
“As well, they do not have available the players like Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and David Beckham inside the club, because youth talent is spread more through 20 clubs than it was 20 years ago.”
Both Chelsea and Manchester City have won the Premiership by adopting this policy so to be honest given the state of the team van Gaal inherited from Sir Alex Ferguson it was time for a makeover and new talent was needed to be brought in to compete for trophies.
