Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson has taken a swipe at the lack of spending from his Premiership rivals.

"I thought there would be more spending," said Ferguson, sitting alongside Owen Hargreaves, his £17m investment from Bayern Munich and Nani, who cost a combined £30m when joining from Sporting Lisbon along with Porto's Anderson. That was without his intended investment in Carlos Tevez, with Ferguson saying United were on the brink of completing a deal for the Argentinian striker.

"There is a lot of money in the Premier League because of the television so I probably expected more to be spent. The thing about doing the business with two young players like Nani and Anderson is great timing for us. They won't play every game next season, but they will play a lot of games and it gives us a future." Ferguson also took the opportunity describe his squad for next season as one of the best in Europe and said that no one in the side was "untouchable", an apparent reference to Jose Mourinho's comment last December that nine of his first team were "untouchables" who could not be dropped.

"In the 90s we rotated our squad very well," he added. "Last season we were involved in the three tournaments - the final of the FA Cup, the semi-final of the European Cup as well as the league.

"We had a great opportunity [to win the treble] but we just didn't have enough bodies to stretch our squad out and save legs where we could have saved legs. In that situation I sort of regretted allowing the young players to stay out on loan.

"If I had been selfish and kept them we would have had a far better chance of getting to the final of the European Cup and a good chance of winning the FA Cup." He insisted, though, that none of his players could be guaranteed a place.

"No one will play all the games next year and hopefully they accept that and move on to the business of trying to achieve success for us."