We never got to ask Ralf Rangnick whether he included winters in the "two or three transfer windows" Manchester United's squad rebuild could be achieved.
Rangnick described the mid-season window as "not the most sustainable" to recruit at his introductory press conference in December yet advised United to make an 11th-hour addition to offset Mason Greenwood's sudden unavailability.
If United are to follow Liverpool's blueprint, then they cannot be as dismissive of the winter window as they have been previously. Virgil van Dijk has been Liverpool's most transformative signing of the last 30 years and the transfer was announced five days before New Year's Day 2018.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer effectively admitted United would not have qualified for the Champions League had they not parachuted Bruno Fernandes into Carrington in late January 2020. The 2006 double of Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra remains United's zenith in the winter window.
United have assembled a title-winning squad over "two or three" windows, ironically at the start of the Glazer family's ownership. Their significant summer recruits in 2005, Edwin van der Sar and Ji-sung Park, left with five Champions League finals between them.
Michael Carrick inherited Roy Keane's number 16 in 2006, a summer David Gill promised "two world-class signings". United ended it with Carrick and Tomasz Kuszczak.
Bayern Munich delayed Owen Hargreaves's move by a year and Sir Alex Ferguson failed with an 11th-hour move for Villarreal midfielder Marcos Senna. Jose Mourinho's Chelsea juggernaut were twice reigning champions and added Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko.
FourFourTwo magazine predicted United would finish fourth. They came first, their 2006-07 title perhaps second only to the breakthrough in 1993 of Ferguson's 13 crowns.
The Glazers' parsimony was masked by Ferguson's genius for eight years. The incumbent United decision-makers have dubiously emphasised the "potential" of the squad when it was more believable during the fraught 2005-06 campaign.
Cristiano Ronaldo turned 21 that season and Wayne Rooney 20. Carrick celebrated his 25th birthday three days before Tottenham confirmed his transfer to the stock exchange, Park and Evra were the same age and Vidic 24.
Van der Sar, 34 at the time of his arrival, ended United's six-year uncertainty in goal, Paul Scholes reinvented himself as a deep-lying playmaker after missing almost the entire second half of 2005-06, Gary Neville assumed the captaincy and was a consistent performer at 36, while Ryan Giggs played his best football in years in a season he turned 33.
United reached the FA Cup final and the Champions League semi-final but their thin squad was shattered and a shadow of the first seven months of the season at Wembley and the San Siro. Three days before the first leg at Old Trafford, Ferguson claimed he had 12 players fit. Dong Fangzhuo, Kieran Richardson, Chris Eagles and Kieran Lee were on the bench against AC Milan in the first leg at Old Trafford.
Reeling from a 3-0 humbling in Milan and a second successive Cup final defeat, United responded ruthlessly. Before May had ended, they had agreed the signings of Hargreaves, Nani and Anderson. A deal for Carlos Tevez dragged yet he was paraded in time for the start of the Premier League season and Gerard Pique returned from a season-long loan with Real Zaragoza to offer cover.
United fetched £26.25m from the sales of Gabriel Heinze, Giuseppe Rossi, Kieran Richardson and Alan Smith. With a squad so deep Park was in his club suit for the Champions League final in Moscow, United secured a Premier League and Champions League double.
That 2007 window is a benchmark United have never matched. There was understandable outcry at the thriftiness in 2006 and 2005 yet Ferguson entrusted a core squad of experienced winners, enhanced by the potential of Rooney and Ronaldo, and embarked on a recruitment run to rival his dealings in the early 90s, a time where the only consultant he knew was his GP.