On strictly monetary terms ignoring inflation we have spent a crap load more, especially in net terms (if you subtract sales).
For net figures, the issue is the rags have been selling top class players from a winning squad, hence could get top prices for them. We've been selling dross (with the occasional good player) from a dross squad so getting rock bottom prices. SWP was our only real success, we sold Anelka at his peak age at a loss and got less for him than Bolton did 4 years later at the age of 30.
As people have said, adjust for normal inflation and, even more so, actual player price inflation then they have spent pots more. They hold the record for beating the british transfer records of any club. We've spent 90% of our cash taking, at best, a mid table team to top of the league team in 3 years when player prices have never been higher. They have been drip-feeding in players for 20 years with some of their players, based on todays prices, would have been costing them £30-£40m instead of £5-6m like they paid.
Another way to look at it is compare the values of their first choice 18 (especially if you take out Scholes & Giggs) to our first choice 18. The difference is only about 10-20% with them coming in around £200m-ish and us around £250m-ish.
Tell the git you'll come back to him in 5 years time, we need to offload a pile of players we don't want, our teams average age is probably around 25 (virtually all proven internationals) and I think apart from another chunk to be spent in summer on a few players (maybe 3-4 at most), mostly recouped from sales hopefully, I can't see us spending big for the foreseeable future. Just £20m/year to refresh the squad unless we have a player leaving is what I see after summer 2013.
