No, you misunderstand me slightly. In my view, England or no England, securing Tevez and Cahill would have almost guaranteed us CL football at the least, and quite possibly a title challenge all the way through to May given the morale boost we would have received from those signings and the (probable) happiness Harry would have felt at being backed so spectacularly, along with a reciprocal sense of duty to the man who backed him (which is a natural human reaction) which would have stood us in good stead going into the whole Capello debacle and Harry's court case vindication. We didn't, we gave Harry Saha and Nelsen, and who can say how that affected his thought processes regarding the England job being more attractive than staying at a club where the chairman listened patiently to his pleas and then disdainfully threw him rejects and castaways with a dismissive sneer?
Harry was a tool to lose focus the way he did. However, Levy's utter disaster of a January window contributed mightily to what happened after that, and there's no denying it.
And that is my fundamental point. We may hit that once-in-a-decade opportunity again under Levy/Lewis, or another similarly tight-fisted, risk-averse chairman/owner combo who charge the fans an arm and a leg while putting nothing like the same money in themselves. But we will inevitably, inevitably blow it, because this tight-fistedness will leave us demoralized and without reinforcements again, in the same way it did in January 2012. We are where we are now (Sixth place on average) because the owners have bled every last drop of money from the fans to keep us here. Nothing has come from them, save for the 60 million quid that jimmyb eloquently talks about (which is two years of matchday income alone) That is not a mighty fine job, that is taking someone's money and spending it in a barely competent enough manner to keep them where their income suggests they should be. And when the chance comes to rise above our station, we will inevitably blow it because the owners are content to let us drift like this instead of backing our shot for the moon with their own cash, or with a bit of risk.
I have said this before, but that bare competence is all that keeps the majority of fans off ENIC's backs. When that evaporates (as it did this summer, for instance, and as it does regularly when the topic of managers comes up), the fans will ask why their enormous investments into their club (which is now run entirely on their infusions and their presence stirring commercial interest) are not leading to anything like a concurrent commitment from the owners, ownership of the club they love or even competent decisions. When that happens, this facade will come under a lot of strain.
