The spending of clubs like City,Chelsea were initially to build a core and without that initial prestige money was the only way they could attract players. Chelsea and City either by chance or design ended up with a core of players to build around , with City you could say Kompany,Yaya,Silva,Aguero and maybe Zabaleta became those dudes and Chelsea's initial core has been finally phased out after some turbulence with their managers .United lost theirs and the supposed replacements in Jones,Smalling,Evans,Welbeck,Cleverly did not pan out as well and they are going through that initial stage of building a team through acquisitions. Some of their purchases looked like panic buys because they wound up with multiple 10s and now that has moved on to a number of strikers that they need to find a way of utilizing effectively. I always thought Van Gaal would be arrogant enough to bring through and rely on a number of youth players over experienced one because he prides himself with his work at Barca and Bayern but the results he has had and the problems are too much to ignore.