Purchased yes, but half of money for both those transfers has been paid by the current regime. Likely a deal that had to be paid within a few years.
The biggest problem under plc was their roof about the wages, which looks to have heart us. I also remember in a Sunday show in Italy with Arrigo Sachi when he was talking about his friendship with Sir Alex and how Sir Alex asked him one time to find a strong striker for him. He proposed to sign Batistuta for 30m. Sir Alex replied something like: find me someone less strong. Then Kenyon saying that if SAF wants to sign players, he should sell first.
Point is, it was the same situation under the last regime. Madrid always overspend us, the likes of Milano and Juventus paid twice the wages we did. It hasn't become worse under Glazers, just that some other clubs have won the lottary by getting purchased from Russiand and Arab billionaires who aren't here for profit. That isn't something we can do against. We still spend a lot of money, but compared to those clubs it isn't a big sum. As it was us under plc compared to Madrid, Milan or Juve. Now you can add Barca whose revenue dwarfs our revenue (which wasn't the case a decade ago, but they and Madrid now won a lot more money because what they have done to other teams in the league), City, PSG and Chelsea (although Chelsea now doesn't spend more than us) and remove the Italian teams. Even under plc, what big non-English players we ever signed? It was the identical scenario, sign young talents from outside at time (with occasionally a superstar like Veron) and try to get the best British talent. Something like we do now. We lose at some transfers now like Bale or probably even Baines. But even then there were the likes of Shearer or Gascoine who chose other teams.
People somehow have convinced themselves that it has been better under the last regime, when nothing, absolutely nothing supports that theory. Also, they have panicked so much on the beginning under Glazers when everyone was lead to believe that their regime will be the end of us. While their regime was not even near as bad as expected (and ironically we had the best success under them, although it has been attributed to Fergie, ironically, Fergie was the manager also under the previous regime but that get lost in translation), the opinions on them to a lot of people haven't changed. There are still fears about the perfectly managable debts, and there is fear that they want to do an Arsenal despite there is no evidence at all that supports that.
