A reason United can get better fees than us is because they have a lower wage ceiling for most players (except Rooney and some others). If Adebayor earned £100,000/week we could probably get £15million to £20million for him. If Bellamy had earned £40,000/week we could probably have gotten £4million for him. And so on. Our wage structure hurts us just as it does Chelsea, look at the players they have released recently. Sunderland wanted Johnson and probably would have paid a big fee for him but as we doubled his wages in December, that puts him far above their wage ceiling.