I am absolutely serious.
We did try and spend money at the end of the window, remember? A RB and winger (Diaz) were the targets.
Rondon was also the target for the striker position and had been since July. If we'd had a bit of money free'd up in July, we'd have signed him then, because we tried to but wouldn't match what Dalian wanted.
If we had unlimited resources to spend across the team, of course Rondon wouldn't have been the target. But the priority was elsewhere on the pitch with what resources we did have, even when we had a bit of potential to spend late in August.
So it's not true to say he was the only option. He was the only option because Benitez wanted him, and Benitez was given full control over who we went for this summer, including turning down RB targets that he didn't think were good enough (which is fine, but let's call a spade a spade, please).