Liverpool claim their signing of Daniel Sturridge proves that the club's American owners were right to veto Brendan Rodgers' bid to buy Clint Dempsey last summer.
Fenway Sports Group blocked the Dempsey deal on transfer deadline day because they felt that spending £6million on a 29-year-old was not a good long-term deal for the Reds.
Managing Director Ian Ayre has now insisted they were correct to take a stand, even though the decision left Rodgers to get by with just two recognised senior strikers for the first half of the campaign.
FSG bankrolled Sturridge's £12million purchase from Chelsea as soon as the January window opened, and Ayre claims the 23-year-old's transfer represents better value than Dempsey did even at double the fee.
"The issue came down to a particular deal and a particular price or structure to that deal," said Ayre. "And it wasn't right to do it.
"Likewise, the interest in certain other players wasn't right. Sometimes you have to be stronger for the greater good.
"People may feel they want to criticise the fact we didn't have an additional striker. But at what price would you sacrifice spending on something that is not in the long-term interests of the club versus what we just did, which was getting a great price on a great player in Daniel Sturridge?
"If we had spent that money in the summer, then we wouldn't have done that trade recently.
"It may have left us short, but the pieces just did not come together. We've come through that period now and I still feel it was the right decision."
Dempsey did still leave Fulham, but was bought by Tottenham instead.
FSG want Rodgers to sign young players with high potential re-sale value - although they are struggling to nail down Blackpool starlet Tom Ince - but Ayre claims that does not mean they are totally against bringing in more experienced players.
"If you remember back to the sale of the club, John Henry said we want to win, but we don't just want to win once, we want to build something which keeps winning," he said.
"If we're going to do that, then we need to do it from the ground up with young players, so that when you start winning you have still got the majority of that group to keep contributing over a period of time.
"If the right, more-senior player became available, and was the right person to contribute, and the manager made that point strongly, we would definitely consider it.
"But where a player is younger and talented with the right level of ability, we will always go for the younger option because it's a better long-term investment for the club to have someone who will be here a long time hopefully."
Ayre added: "We may or may not add to what we have done already before the end of January. We will only buy when the right deal is there at the right time."
Could that player be 31-year-old Barcelona keeper Victor Valdes? He's being linked with Liverpool, while Manchester United's David De Gea is being linked with his gig at the Nou Camp.