They said the same 2017/18 when I mentioned Jarrod Bowen and Ollie Watkins.. instead we opted for Martin Braithwaite and Britt Assombalonga.
You're ignoring a few things though, the players have to want to come to the northeast, or be willing to accept whatever we offer and this effectively cuts down our options by about 90% I reckon.
Braithwaite is a good player, and has and will play for better teams than Bowen or Watkins, sure he might have a motivation problem, but that's hard to know in advance, especially foreign transfers.
Signing Watkins in 17/18 though? When we signed Britt? The season before in 16/17 Watkins had scored 13 for Exeter in League 2, hardly lighting it up enough to sign for a side apparently pushing for promotion. Then he only got 10 goals in 17/18 and same in 18/19, he wasn't good enough then, to get us back into the prem that year, which is what we were going for. Sure he's good enough now, and was in 19/20, but that would have been too late for what we were aiming for.
Assombalonga did alright (50% more goals than Watkins, in 17/18 and 18/19), even considering we had a lack of creativity which everyone mentioned every week. Sure, we paid too much for him, but that's what happens to unfashionable clubs in unfashionable places.
We're playing a different game in the transfer market, the player pool each team can sign is different. Just like we had an advantage from mid 90's to mid 00's when we would offer players more money, and could spend more on good players, for the next 10 years we had to do that on worse players (as everyone else had money, and we had spent too much). Parachute payments gave us money for the Monk season, but it didn't change the player pool.
We seem to be back near some sort of equilibrium for the size of our club now, and have seemingly balanced the books a bit so should be ok going forward, but we need a year in the prem for a money boost, and not blow it on unknowns or old players.
I like Barlaser, once he's found his feet and we've coached him to what we want he'll be pushing for a start, he's good enough to start for a play off side. He's possibly not good enough to start for a top-two side, but Hackney isn't yet either, and Howson's getting on.