As with Akpom or any other player it is about getting best value from the budget and how much of it you want to spend on a particular player.
Steffen on loan at £30k per week costs in a year what a £15k per week players does bought for £3m on a 4 year deal.
The loan goes back eventually and the cost is sunk. The signing can either improve, grow in value and generate a profit, be sold to cover some of the remaining book value, or see his contract out and sink the whole fee.
IF the club sell Akpom for £15m, then his fee will have cost £2.75m over 3 years and allegedly been paid wages of £27k per week (offset by loan fees/wages). His cost will be £2.75m + £4.3m wages (max), so £7m (plus agents fees etc)
Middlesbrough would have enjoyed his considerable services and overall made £8m profit out of signing him.
Taking Archer (who I love by the way) or anyone else on loan and paying £30k per week wages for 3 years would leave us not owning a player to sell and having paid £4.7m.
It is some swing.
But not as big as signing Assombolonga for over £15m over 4 years, paying him min £40k per week and then seeing him leave at the end of his contract having cost over £23m.
So a swing between Akpom and Assombolonga of £31m.
Obviously you don't know what is going to happen, but it does highlight the value of Brighton or Brentford class recruitment, rather than Everton.
Ideally you would buy the right players, not loan them, but nobody gets all their purchases right.
At times loans make absolute sense to boost a squad, where you can not afford to buy/fund the quality you are loaning.
I posted a few days ago re Akpom that he is a complex puzzle for the hierarchy to solve, but the whole squad is a series of calculations/judgements about where and how to get the best value from the squad market value and the forthcoming budget.
Steffen/a Goalkeeper is a part of that whole scenario.
I think he is a good distributor, has improved considerably his command of his area, but remains too easily beaten by shots.
For me it's not do you accept the times he puts someone under pressure with a daft pass because of him starting so much of our play; rather it is do you accept he is going to let some saveable shots in because of his importance to setting up play?
If he had the lot he would be PL, but he doesn't so won't be. The question is how much of our budget would you spend on him and can you get better value elsewhere?
I'm personally not that bothered whether he stays or goes, as I could accept his shot stopping weakness in return for his importance to setting up play, but at a sensible price.