More often than we get credit for
Man Utd were after Bale, Dembele and Reguilon, for example
We were very good at it during the era when the gap between us and the top teams was large enough that a promising young player would weigh up the two options and come to the conclusion that they would likely get far more playing time at us, develop more strongly and potentially use us as a stepping stone to a mega money move a few years down the line. Cf. Berbatov, Modric, Bale etc.
We then entered an era, mainly under Poch, where suddenly the gap narrowed quite rapidly and we were playing in the same competitions and challenging for the same trophies. As a result, that game time was no longer a guarantee. It is no coincidence that during that era we saw a number of supposedly promising youngsters fade to nothing (Wimmer, Nkoudou, Njie, Janssen, Clarke all spring to mind), our academy products ground to a halt and a glut of promising young players joined the likes of Leicester, West Ham and even dare I say it Arsenal for exactly the same reasons they'd joined us 6-7 years earlier.
The problem was compounded by the fact that even though the on field gap had narrowed drastically, the financial gap between us and the top table was still vast, so we couldn't throw money at the problem to solve it either, outbidding any competition and paying young talent a fortune to sit twiddling their thumbs all season.
So we got caught in a bit of a no man's land, then shot ourselves in both feet by first appointing a manager with zero track record of navigating no man's lands followed by another manager with no track record of managing a club bigger than mid table.
By complete coincidence, the financial gap is closing at exactly the same time as we have had the good sense to appoint a manager who is renowned as an excellent coach, has genuine gravitas and - perhaps most importantly - has an excellent working relationship with the man whose job it is to phone the young talent in the first place.
There is a long road ahead still and the on field gap has widened enormously over the past 4 years, but we are marching in the right direction at last.
