Exactly. Everyone moans we overpay yet no one actually says how they would approach clubs and get those fees down.
Start of the window, before we played any matches, we probably could have landed one or two really good players - now we're screwed.
We are trying to sell playing for a club that lost 4-0 against Brentford, which Cristiano desperately wants to leave because he thinks our squad's attitude is shit, a club where quite literally everyone who has walked through the door in the past 10 years has become a worse player, a graveyard for talent where significant talent stagnate, a club where manager's careers are set-back years and a club that will spend ages penny-pinching for no discernable reason what so ever.
We're a bad sell, and the only way to attract anyone is to pay over the odds. The sooner we realise that, the less concerned we can be about overpaying. It's not about overpaying, but paying for the right players. Not that we should be confident that we are getting the right people. This guy is likely our 7th-8th choice - behind Nunez (Liverpool), Haaland (City), Lautaro (Refused), Dembele (refused), Werner (Leipzig) and Sesko (Leipzig), that Brazilian prodigy (too raw), could be more.
Given how superstitious some players are, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a solid chunk of them believe the club is cursed.