Glazers' pitiful transfer window signalled new approach that Man Utd still haven’t recovered from

While many observers trace back United’s decline to 2013 when Sir Alex Ferguson left the club, for others it actually began four years before that in the summer of 2009.

The season that had just ended saw United crowned Premier League champions for the 20th time and reach the Champions League final for the second successive year, only to lose out to Lionel Messi and Barcelona in a 2-0 defeat. Despite that failure, it was one of the great teams that Ferguson built, with Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo at their pomp and Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov completing a fantastic four-pronged strikeforce to rival the days of Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Teddy Sheringham and Ole Solskjaer.

That fearsome foursome was about to be ripped apart. Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid for a then-world record transfer fee of £80m. At the same time, United withdrew from an agreement to sign Tevez from Media Sports Investments, the agency that represented him, after a two-year loan agreement.

The rest, as they say, is history. Tevez instead signed for Manchester City, the 'noisy neighbours' as Fergie called them. It was a statement signing by the new cash-rich club and Tevez proved to be one of the catalysts behind them eventually catching then toppling United.

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There’s an old saying that it doesn’t matter who you sell, as long as you replace them with someone of equal, if not better, quality. United didn’t do that in the summer of 2009.

Instead, two key figures in the 2008 Champions League triumph, who had made United an attacking force of real fear, were