“We know Manchester City are going to spend fortunes, pay stupid money and silly salaries. We know that happens. We can’t do anything about that. We are not like other clubs who can spend fortunes on proven goods. We invest in players who will be with the club for a long time, who will create the character of the club and the excitement for our fans. We are good at that and we are going to continue that way.” Sir Alex Ferguson, May 2012.

He always did like to wind up the opposition, Fergie. Sometimes it was in a lighthearted way, such as the occasions when Paul Hince, an old City fan from the Manchester Evening News, turned up at press conferences and Ferguson would demand to know what was happening at “the Temple of Doom”. Then, at other times, after Abu Dhabi’s money had changed the landscape, he frequently showed his worst side, too, like in the minutes after Michael Owen’s stoppage-time winner in the 4-3 victory at Old Trafford, when Ferguson could be found in the tunnel, jabbing his finger and machine-gunning swear words, close up, at the first City official who had walked into his vision. Always, there was the sense that City troubled him more than he wanted to let on.

Their spending, he once said, was kamikaze. He remembered how Sunderland had once been known as the Bank of England club, and cheerfully pointed out that they had also been relegated. His stock phrase to explain the downscaling of Manchester United’s transfer business was “no value in the market”, and the chief executive at the time, David Gill, had his own lines carefully prepared. Check the history, Gill used to say, and it would show United had never gone in for buying superstars for huge sums when they could develop their own for nothing.

If only that were true. Twenty-one different clubs have broken the British transfer record since Aston Villa made a Scottish inside-forward by the name of Willie Groves the first £100 player in 1893. United, however, are the only one to have done it eight times. Sunderland and Arsenal are next, on four, then Derby on three, and City, Newcastle and Blackburn on two.

And Ferguson? It happened on his watch on more occasions than all the rest put together. Ferguson broke the record five times, for Ruud van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane, Andy Cole, Juan Sebastián Verón and Rio Ferdinand. There would have been a sixth occasion had Robinho not signed for City on the same night Dimitar Berbatov joined United in 2008 and, going a little further back, let’s not forget Ferguson had also assembled the most expensive team in England before the Class of ’92 broke through. Indeed, one of the amazing things about that famous 5-1 defeat at Maine Road in 1989 was that the City team cost less than Paul Ince. “They [United] were football’s biggest spenders and seemed able to buy anyone at any price,” Gary James, author of Manchester, A Football History, wrote of the time.

It is worth bearing in mind now that United are being accused of losing their soul for trying to buy their way back to the top. Ángel di María and Radamel Falcao have come in, with Danny Welbeck going out, and that, plainly, is a shift in direction. A good one, I would say, and it has been surprising to see so many eminent United men, among them Bryan Robson, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, break from routine to question their old club when the bottom line, surely, is that the upgrade is both necessary and considerable. United are not losing their soul. They are simply playing catch-up. It is probably their only way back and, if anything, the most legitimate criticism about them returning to the highest end of the market is that they should have done it long before now.

It is certainly a strange set of events when, a few weeks ago, it was clear to everyone that there was the profound risk of more stagnation if Ed Woodward, United’s chief executive, did not bring in at least a couple of category-A signings. He eventually did just that and, suddenly, there is a new set of complaints. Mike Phelan, Ferguson’s former assistant, says the club’s identity has been “broken”. Neville has talked about a culture of overspending, and of expecting it to be “a lot more controlled” and nobody should rule out the increasingly marginalised Ferguson stabbing with his pen, his favoured choice of artillery these days, when his updated autobiography is released next month.

Woodward, thankfully, has a tough skin, and probably needs every layer judging by the cartoon, entitled ‘Manchester United and the Transfer Market’, that has been running on the Daily Telegraph’s website, of him going into a convenience store called Costless, asking to see their “very finest” chocolate and eventually leaving after handing over £80 for a Mars Bar.

Woodward returns to the same store a while later and the shopkeeper, recognising him, offers a pack of wine gums for £100. Woodward offers the “far more realistic price of £95” and they start haggling.

Shopkeeper: “£98.”.

Woodward: “£99?”

Shopkeeper: “£110.”

Woodward: “£100?”

Shopkeeper: “Deal!”

Woodward (triumphantly): “Still got it.”

The modern-day football executive should probably just be grateful that Spitting Image – the television show that turned Bobby Robson into “Rubbisho” when he was England manager – is no longer around to get into their ribs, but Woodward could probably be forgiven, sometimes, for feeling damned when he does and damned when he doesn’t.

There is a slightly odd feel when United went into the final few days of the transfer window wanting a centre-half but landed Falcao, in the manner of someone going into hospital for open‑heart surgery and coming out with a boob job. But what a player. Falcao swished into his press conference like he was in a scene from Miami Vice. It was a great story that Louis van Gaal regaled about his first training session – “He gets one ball and it was in the goal” – and you might have to forgive me, amid all the debate about Welbeck, for wondering whether the whole aura surrounding the generation of Giggs, Butt, Scholes and the Nevilles, with the movie, the book and the gradual blurring of time, has started to over-amplify the truth about United’s dependency on their youth system.

It is no doubt an awkward truth for many at Old Trafford, where they have produced a prodigious number of youth-team players over the past decade, but it is the truth, nonetheless, that very few from that line have been of the requisite quality to remain at a club of this size and ambition. Welbeck, according to Van Gaal, came close, but could not quite tick all the boxes: a good player, sometimes a very good player – but, ultimately, not quite as talented as the manager wanted when there was an upgrade to be had with Falcao, superstar.

Naturally, it is understandable that people with connections to the club might be sad to see a player whose passport is stamped with “Longsight” being moved out, especially when it leaves Tyler Blackett as the only bona fide Mancunian in the squad. United have always liked to look after their own, and it is some statistic, via Tony Park, a historian and author specialising in their youth team, that Sunday’s game will be the 3,705th consecutive match, since 1937, that the first-team squad has included at least one homegrown player. But that does not have to change, and Van Gaal has been adamant that it won’t.

Check the history, as Gill used to say, and you will find that Van Gaal gave a 16-year-old Clarence Seedorf his Ajax debut, brought through the teenage Thomas Müller, and has frequently trusted young players ahead of bigger names.

If Old Trafford’s next generation are talented enough to hold their own, they will be in the team. But a club of United’s stature really should not have to apologise for flexing their financial muscle. It has been this way since Matt Busby paid a record £115,000 for Denis Law to sign from Torino in 1962 and, again, when Robson arrived from West Brom for £1.5m in 1981. Di María, at £59.7m, is just part of a natural progression and it is overdue.

This is the first year of Glazer family ownership that the club have spent more on transfer fees than the debts that, sadly, none of the old boys ever see fit to mention. Just imagine where United might be if it had been the norm over the past nine years rather than the exception.

Professional etiquette sadly gone for a Burton

Is it time for the League Managers’ Association, so quick to condemn clubs for the speed at which they hire and fire, to put in place a code of conduct for their own members that requires them to show a touch more respect for one another?

The question is asked after a week in which Gary Rowett – two years into his first job at Burton Albion – cheerfully announced, via the club’s website, that he had just turned down an offer from two leagues above.

“Following discussions with Blackpool, I have decided to remain at Burton Albion for the foreseeable future. I feel as though it is not the right job for me at the present time.” One problem: Blackpool have a manager in place, and José Riga has suffered enough – courtesy of the club’s increasingly bewildering chairman, Karl Oyston – without finding out that the interviews have already started for a position he has not even vacated.

It goes on all the time, we all know that, and there is certainly nothing new about one manager trying to take another’s job. This, however, is the first time I can recall the guy in the background being so oblivious to good etiquette that he tells the world without even a flicker of self‑awareness.