I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but.......wait and see, you might be surprised.
What you shouldn't pay any heed to is how much these guys are going to cost. Particularly in Portugal, you can shave around 40% or more off their so-called "release clause". Sure, it's likely Nunez in particular won't end up here. I won't cry about it. But is it POSSIBLE? Yes, it is. Money talks and if there's an executive decision to gun for top 4 next season because of the uncertainty at Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal then the investors might go for it.
I think we'll end up next level down, in the end. But when you consider 'next level down' is still people like Patrick Schick, Alex Izak and Jonathan David, it's not a bad spot for a bit of fishing.
I'm always saying that football is actually fine margins. There's the top talent who are just apart from the rest, of course, but in the top-half-of-the-Premier-League bracket there's players in the Championship and probably even League One who could step up. Wood aside, maybe Nickson isn't bad. Joelinton has become a top level midfielder, Targett excellent, Burn better than the bench at Brighton suggested, Bruno's easily double what we paid, ASM was only £20m. Even in the likes of Almiron you can see what Nickson thought we were getting (vs Palace), but it's again those fine margins.
Long and short is, Nunez is not a world beater (yet), him joining someone else not guaranteed so we should - for the first time in 15+ years - be allowed to revel in dreams of big players, ambition and future glory. Let people dream of Nunez; it may not happen, but we're mentioned as interested and nobody is laughing, so enjoy it!