I'm not sure we did that when we qualified for Europe, really. We bought in a couple of fillers like Martina but I don't think we bloated the squad, we just replaced the big players badly and for some reason we marginalised Fonte.
Puel had to make do with KD in goal, Stephens and Yoshida at the back because we didn't replace VVD, cheapo Charlie up front because we didn't replace Pelle etc.
As everyone knows, we wasted loads of money on signings that contributed naff all (Hoedt, Carillo, Elyonnousi, Lemina etc.). It wasn't a volume problem, just poor selection.