It is more than you'd ideally like to spend on Mykolenko but clubs tend to pay for potential these days, rather than proven quality. It makes sense to do that as well because the player has to be really, really terrible for you to never see that money again. Moise Kean had about the most forgettable spell here in existence and if Brands' hail mary two year loan (God what an absolute numpty he was) turns out well then we'll still make a profit on him.
Give me Mykolenko for £17m all day over the likes of Allan and Doucoure for £20m. They are decent enough players but you just know we'll be releasing both for free in three years time.
As for money being available, I don't believe that we had much room to manoeuvre without sales. I don't believe that we were ever seriously in for Luis Diaz, nothing about those stories ever added up - I knew that wasn't happening as soon as the reports said that the deal hinged on James agreeing to go the other way, on loan no less! Porto are no mugs, they typically rinse teams clean when they sell their best players so they were never going to sell their current star man for £20m and a crock on loan.
As a fanbase I think we were pretty unanimous that the squad needed to be overhauled so I'm not going to start crying now that it appears that this finally might be about to happen. I just hope we don't stop at Digne, we need to get Mina (regretfully), Iwobi, Davies, Gomes, Keane, Holgate and Coleman out the door in the next six months, in addition to the ones we are releasing in the summer. I just hope we haven't finished our business in this window, we need a defensive midfielder urgently.