If he'd done that our title chances could also rise but fair play to LvG for his constant trust in what he possess at his disposal. Maybe with long term planning we could achieve a similar effect what class 92 did but for that we would have to give him time and massive vote of confidence. At least two more years for him to develop youngsters further. I'm patient enough to wait but if his plan would fail it could be a massive waste of efforts and sign of inevitable stagnation plus lowering the standards, slowly but still more and more closer to FC Liverpool's state.
I acknowledge that danger, take Ferguson out of the equation and maybe that's the 'natural' state for the club at this point in time? The man who kept the standards up for more than 20 years is gone, and everybody agrees he was something special, so wouldn't it actually be the reasonable, rational thing to have lowered standards already?
My viewpoint is not that we should happily lower the standards and resign to that. The point is that you can't just pull high standards out of thin air. The past doesn't give us a right to high standards, Ferguson doesn't because he quit, the state the squad was in doesn't because it was past it. The only thing that could justifie high standards is spending power. But there's the problem, world class players aren't for sale, RM, Barca, Bayern, PSG, Chelsea and City won't sell their first choice players to us and some of them may even buy ours, while some of them have very productive academies to go with it.
The right to high standards has to be earned in a competitive environment, by hard work, smart work, good choices and sacrifices. It's not just Liverpool, all over Europe there are former great clubs, and their fans having high standards based on nothing but past glory aren't helping because impatience is the enemy of a good restoration job. Currently the hard work and the smart work is to learn a playing style that can give the players an edge, to sign young players before they are world class and develop them, the good choices are to invest in the academy and invest time in those youngsters because we need to find quality anywhere we can, and the sacrifices well.... they come along by themselves as you've noticed, it's your fun, your pulled hair, your boredom, your frustration.
Van Gaal signed a lot of players already but most of them are long term investments which is good. The problem is we're not looking like title wining team just yet... there has to be some kind of a compromise between Mou's hunger for quick success and LvG's vision. Entirely different choice of future manager perhaps ?
I don't think you can compromise on vision. A different future manager should be about youth too. There's a chance here, I've heard the Chinese language doesn't allow to make a distinction between crisis and chance, it might not be true but I like the thought. Within a few years the United academy could be the shortest way for young talents to the top, it could pull all the greatest local talent, but also talent from anywhere (English gives an edge over Spanish and German academies here). The class of 92 was a freak occurance, but a steady 4 former academy players in the starting line up is the greatest advertisement for an academy. The same with young players from elsewhere, they see Martial, Depay and Shaw getting lots of playing time, develop and shine and they will choose that over a place on the bench or in the stands at Stanford Bridge. A choice for youth is partly a selffullfilling prophecy, it will strengthen itself once you make the choice, because it will attract greater talents.
To justifie the high standards you have to gain an edge from somewhere. Anything wil do, United doesn't have the sun, the night life, the cuisine (although I've heard good things about 'Wing's'), but I think chances for youngsters is the best opportunity to compensate for that and get the best players that way. With Mourinho, that opportunity is gone, others will even have the youth edge on United. With a different compromise, it might not be gone but it's seriously endangered. I admit I'll hate to see Van Gaal fail, but I'm fine with any manager who is committed to youth as the way to compete with clubs which have other advantages. But it's hard to find one who is as good with youth as Van Gaal.
How so out of interest?
Are you still thinking about Ajax, in about 95?
Ajax from 91-97. The output of youth academies is irregular by nature, 95 was peak because of the two great talents Kluivert and Seedorf, but the uefacup was won years before with a lot of youngsters also. In Barcelona he promoted youth, at AZ he did (Dembele for example), at Bayern he did and with the Netherlands he also relied on very inexperienced and young defenders especially. If you consistently give youth a chance, the peaks will happen, the class of 92, the 'lichting van 94' at Ajax, they are the icing on the cake, you can have the cake without the icing in the other years, but you can't have the icing without baking a cake first.