I’m not sure this has changed much recently, or that our approach should be constantly trying to sign big name players.
In the last few years we’ve tried to buy our way out of trouble, bad investments and a lack of good players coming through the youth system have left us needing to. Also the role of agents and the media mean that everyday there is a story about someone turning down Jose or Man Utd, or about a player who wants a new contract being linked with a transfer then changing his mind to sign a new deal.
We built all our success on academy graduates (ours or others), cherry picking the best domestic players (Rio, Rooney, Carrick, Sheringham, Yorke) from lower clubs, supported by a handful of foreign players, who most of the time weren’t star players before they came (Schmeichel, Solskjaer, Stam, Van Nistelrooy). In fact, most players that were “stars” before they came (Veron, Falcao, DiMaria) didn’t work out.
I think if you look at most the serious targets we’ve been linked with recently (Alderweireld, Maquire, Perisic), they were all willing to come if we’d have agreed to the price asked).