Well, we received £50m for Torres within about an hour of the deadline day closing.
Within that time period we had to have someone come to Liverpool, complete the medical and sign the documents within the hour. Considering that means anywhere out of the UK is out of the equation, and you'd be pushing it with a plane from the south then it really only leaves the north.
So, that left very little time to actually identify a suitable target (who was actually one of the biggest prospects in football at the time, reportedly a lot of people were interested) and get him down here. Suarez was a player from Ajax, so there was no guarantee we even knew what we were getting; do you think we would have spent all of the Torres money to get him just so we had an actual striker for the second half of the season?
Ze, although we only knew about the deal just before the window closed I'm sure that the 3 clubs involved (Chelsea, Newcastle, Liverpool) were in talks well before that. Similar to the Meireles deal, we heard about it just before the window closed but you can bet your life the deal was going on throughout the day. That's why with half hour to go they said Meireles had handed a transfer request in, then 10 minutes later he had signed. When the transfer request was publicised it was basically the club saying Meireles had gone.
