We could do this all night with the "if you x then y?", so I'm just going to leave it there, but you really don't see the merits of getting a player in early during the transfer window than late? Especially during a period where games come thick and fast, the squad's depleted and the club is in crisis on the pitch?
I'm not saying we should've given them a flat €100m on Jan 1st, because that would be ridiculous, but after haggling for a month we've basically given them the same amount of money they've always asked for but made the bonuses easier to achieve than the ones we started out with. So what exactly did all the haggling do? It's not like they were asking for €100m in the beginning and our negotiators got it down to €40m. We're still paying them €80m with all bonuses included, so I ask again, could we have paid that same amount (that they were insisting on all along) earlier and had the benefit of having him in the squad earlier?