Well, this was expected tbh.
We never considered paying 20-30m for Tadić, he was just meant as a 6-month emergency solution. Maybe he wouldn't help us a lot this season but he wouldn't hurt our future either as we would only pay a loan fee (not astronomical) and his wages for a few months. That's if we were even seriously considering him, MD said his agent offered him to us and we rejected him. We'll probably never know for sure but it's more or less obvious he won't come here so this discussion is irrelevant now anyway.
About the bolded part: People should stop thinking we are only signing old players because this is not the case at all. Since 2016 we have signed:
- Gomes (23)
- Paco (23)
- Umtiti (23)
- Digne (23)
- Cillessen (27)
- Denise Suarez (22)
- Coutinho (25)
- Dembele (20)
- Paulinho (29)
- Semedo (24)
- Deulofeu (23)
- Mina (23)
- Malcom (21)
- Lenglet (23)
- Arthur (22)
- Vidal (31)
- Todibo (19)
- Griezmann (28)
- FDJ (22)
- Neto (30)
- Firpo (23)
Not counting Barça B signings (or Emerson who we still haven't seen in a Barça shirt) and short-term loans like KPB or Murillo average age of our signings in last 4 years is around 24 years. Only 5 players signed were 27 or older, two of them were backup GKs.
Much bigger problem is we only got 4 starters (Umtiti/Lenglet, Arthur, FDJ, Griezmann) out of those signings and even they have some question marks. Umtiti was great before injury but is not reliable now, Lenglet would be much better as a 3rd CB but was pushed into a starter role because of Umtiti's injuries, Arthur had some injury problems of his own but should stay here longterm hopefully. The same for FDJ who has adapted faster than players usually do. Griezmann is still adapting and should do better in second half of this season and next year.
Further we have/had some solid squad/rotational players like Vidal, Semedo (he was brought as a future starter and failed at that though) or Digne and Paulinho in previous years. We shouldn't totally give up on Todibo and Firpo yet but let's say we somehow "hit" on 8-9 out of 21 players (around 40% success ratio) which is not exactly bad itself. What hurt us more is we've missed on our two biggest investments while the jury on the third one is still out (I give Griezmann much better chances to give us 2-3 good to potentially great seasons than to Coutinho or Dembele though).
So I think our focus shouldn't be as much on signing young players at all costs (overpaying for them) but rather finding the right players even if they are a bit "older". Of course a lot is also depending on a financial view of the transfers (fee+salaries) but I'd prefer to get one or two 26-27 years old players who can give us 4-5 good seasons than miss out on 22 yo talents like we did a lot over the past few years.
I would say our two most successfull transfer windows in last decade were:
1.) 2014/15 - Suarez (27), Raki (26), Mathieu (31), Bravo (31), MATS (22) - we obviously failed on Vermaelen (mainly because of his injuries) and Douglas but we still got several longterm starters
2.) 2010/11 - Masche (26), Villa (29), Adriano (26) and Afellay (24)
2013/14 could also be in the mix but we only bought Neymar and also brought back Bojan (still don't know why lol) but it's hard to evaluate a success of a transfer window if you buy just one player. We also still don't know and probably never will know exactly how much we really paid for Neymar. Obviously he gave us some good/great seasons and brought us big money when he left (it's our fault we didn't use that money better) so it's still much better than had he failed like his fellow countryman.
So I'd say in general we've had more success when we were looking for more proven/experienced players than when we were signing youngsters. Obviously we could (as evident from the past) fail or succeed with signing any age group of players so while we should consider players's age it shouldn't always be the most important factor. Buying young players doesn't always "set you up for the future" if they are not the right players.
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