Over the years, United have managed to maintain its youth structure and establish young players into world class superstars. Current names that were at United from an early age include David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, and Paul Scholes. More players like Gary and brother Phil Neville started at United's youth academy in the early 90's. John O'shea, who's been a true servant to the club alongside Darren Fletcher, are current players who where found from the youth team. Current Barcelona central defender Gerard Pique joined the youth academy from Barcelona and spent a couple years with the club before returning to his home town.
More respected figures that started their illustrious careers at the United academy include Bobby Charlton, George Best, Mark Hughes and Brian Kidd. Many academy players who failed to make the United first team currently play in the Premier League for opposition clubs, including well-known names like Fraizer Campbell (Sunderland), Kieran Richardson (Sunderland), Jonathan Spector (West Ham) and Italian forward Giuseppe Rossi now plays his football in Spain for Villarreal. Currently United have great talent within the system such as, Fredrico Macheda, Danny Wellbeck, Darren Gibson, Johnny Evans, Cory Evans and Joshua King but they are not getting given chances on regular basis to establish themselves as potential stars.
In recent years United had to buy talent from elsewhere, and whilst that's the common order, but if the trend continues, it will be even harder to survive financially. Recently the likes of Ronaldo, Tevez, Rooney, Evra, Nani, and to some extent, Valencia have been the catalyst within the side, but none of them was from the youth academy. Although United's youth system is a world class academy but there aren't enough players making it to the top, nowadays.
Speculation surrounding more transfers to Old Trafford means the current squad of players is not good enough and played average football throughout this season. United's chances of winning the league stands on the hopes of Chelsea dropping points, so even second place will be good enough for current season.
Next season, the challengers will only grow. Spurs and City will make a point of breaking into the 'Big Four', Liverpool will be looking to fight back, Arsenal will surely be a handful having missed out on silverware for the past five season, and Chelsea's threat will only get bigger.