Harry Kane could prove a test of Manchester United transfer strategy this summer

The two most expensive signings in Manchester United's history both came when there was no Champions League football to offer at Old Trafford and if the club pursues Harry Kane this summer it will make it a hat-trick of mega deals at a time when the club was out of Europe's elite.

It's been a United strategy to splash the cash when their stock has fallen in recent years but the £89million capture of Paul Pogba in 2016 and the £80million spent to sign Harry Maguire three years later hardly fall into the category of money well spent.

On both occasions, United improved enough the following season to return to the Champions League and it probably says a lot about the attraction of playing for the club that one season away from Europe's top table wasn't seen then as a deal-breaker.

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Part of that is a feeling that an absence from the Champions League is only ever temporary for United, but presuming they don't find a run of form that has looked beyond them all season they are about to finish outside the top four in the Premier League for the fifth time in nine seasons.

At some point, a manager will be appointed by United that will get things right, but then Pogba would have thought that was the case in 2016 and he's coming to the realisation that six years in his prime have produced a League Cup and a Europa League. That would have felt unthinkable when he joined the club, but then so much that has happened in the last nine years has been unfathomable.

In that summer of 2016 United signed players from Juventus, Paris St-Germain, Borussia Dortmund and Villarreal, so the status of the club as being part of Europe's elite was clear. This is a club that markets