Sir Jim Ratcliffe changing Manchester United transfer strategy will be easier said than done

When you've spent more than £1.5bn on transfers in the last decade to win an FA Cup, a League Cup and a Europa League, it's understandable that your transfer strategy is going to come under the spotlight.

Never has so much been spent to achieve so little and the waste that has blighted Manchester United since 2013 is reason enough for any prospective new owner or investor to take the scissors to a strategy that has barely worked. That spending has failed to yield a title challenge and has led to only two runners-up finishes, both times well in the rearview mirror of Manchester City.

Across Manchester, it is the Blues who have shown how to splash the cash. When they've spent big their strategy has been almost faultless. There has barely been a misstep since Pep Guardiola arrived and was reunited with director of football Txiki Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano.

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But have United just signed bad players, or is the list of successes so long at the Etihad because players step into an environment built for the manager to succeed? Guardiola's longevity makes the stylistic demands simple, it makes the recruitment operation smoother and most players reach the standards eventually, even if Kalvin Phillips is doing his best to prove the exception to the rule.

There's certainly an argument that United have never had the stability for players to be long-term success stories and that the transfer approach has been too reactive to the demands of managers at a time when change in the dugout has been a constant. The success rate of transfers looks to be improving under Erik ten Hag, a manager with a