Absolutely, yes - I agree wholeheartedly.
I have been crying out for a different recruitment policy for years, we shouldn't allow the "manager" to do anything beyond vetoing individual players.
But there is still a major difference between the two (possible) "favour" scenarios here:
When Ole recommended Haaland initially, they were still both at Molde. When ETH recommended Antony, he did so as United manager (and he didn't recommend an extremely promising kid who could be aqcuired for peanuts, he recommended a 22 year old who was never going to move from Ajax to United for peanuts). *
* And no, of course ETH wasn't directly involved in the transaction which ended up costing United a grotesque amount of money for an utterly mediocre player, but it was never a possibility to get Antony on the cheap (which would have been the only possible justification for the move itself).