In Ed Woodward's first summer in charge of signing players after the departure of David Gill, United wanted midfielder Thiago following Scholes' retirement. His dad later revealed a deal was “close” but after we dithered he ended up signing for Bayern Munich for just £22m.

The very next day, United offered Barcelona £25m for Fabregas which was rejected. Having just sold his understudy in Thiago, the chances of now selling Fabregas too were slim to none. A week later we increased the offer to £30m, unsurprisingly that was rejected too.

Three weeks after Fellaini’s release clause of £23.5m had expired, United offered £16m for Fellaini and £12m for Baines. Everton rejected what they called a "derisory and insulting" bid.

With a couple weeks of the transfer window remaining, Woodward left United's pre-season tour to attend to "urgent transfer business". We needn't have got our hopes up.

Moyes had been led to believe that Bale was coming and later revealed the club had a helicopter ready and waiting. Moyes was asked about the transfer and with a smile he said, "Manchester United are always looking at the best players and we’re always trying to improve the team."

Three days later, United upped their bid for Fellaini and Baines to £36m, which was again rejected. Bale signed for Real Madrid. On deadline day we bid £40m for Sami Khedira and that was also rejected.

United had a verbal agreement with Toni Kroos to join before the window closed, but he stayed at Bayern. More on him later.

With 12 hours of the window remaining, United went in for Herrera. When the move collapsed, claimed the deal was hijacked by “imposters” who were “not acting on the club’s behalf”. In reality, United left it too late to negotiate through the complexities of the buy-out clause.

Herrera had a release clause of €36m and Bilbao made it clear from the beginning they wouldn’t accept anything less. United persisted in offering €30m though before time started to run out and United realised they had to meet the asking price, by which point it was too late.

Those same “imposters” were actually three Spanish lawyers, Rodrigo García Lucas, Alvaro Reig Gurrea and Guillermo Gutiérrez, who oversaw Bayern's successful move for Javi Martínez. That deal was completed by paying Bilbao the buyout clause and had taken a month to organise.

Anyway, back to Baines. We offered £15m for him and it was rejected, so United made a last minute move for Real Madrid’s Fabio Coentrao. That transfer collapsed after the player Madrid had lined up to replace him with, Guilherme Siqueira, had already gone to Benfica on loan.

Woodward's first window in charge closed with us signing Fellaini for £4m more than the release clause which had expired earlier that summer and just £500k less than what United had previously offered for Fellaini and Baines combined.