No secret that I've been in favor of us signing Werner, but I can't figure out why he wasn't bought last summer for less than half of what he'll cost this summer. That doesn't exactly speak towards big-picture planning, IMO.

As with any prospective transfer, it's important to identify a player who fits the club's (and manager's) system, strategy, tactics, etc. And it's important to make sure the player is at the proper level and fits a position of need. I don't think many of us would argue on that.

But with that in mind: if you identify a player who fits all those criteria and can be had for a realistic price, go get him! And if the player does not meet all of those criteria, it doesn't matter if he has a good season, you stay with targets you meet your criteria.

So in the case of Werner: what's changed? Was he previously lacking in some area last summer that caused him to not be signed then? Have we re-assessed our needs and found that he is NOW a good fit but wasn't then? Or was he purely a casualty of being fixated on signing Sane?

(i.e. we were so set on signing Sane last year that all other targets kind of fell to the wayside)

Werner is having a great season under Nagelsmann, but he's not a fundamentally different player now than he was a year ago. So what is it?

The short of it is this: if Werner "checks all the boxes" right now, he checked them all last year, too. And if Werner didn't check those boxes last year, he's not checking them now, either. For me, this ultimately leads to two conclusions....

1. We can't make up our minds in regards to what potential transfers fit our needs/profile and/or we don't have a clear transfer strategy in place in this regard

2. We're just kinda daft and Werner WAS the 'right' player all along and we just f*cked around too much last summer.