Basically Cormack has looked at the celtic model and thought "why can't we do that on a contextually smaller scale?". It does make sense too as I guess when you think about it the biggest selling point about playing in Scotland for a foreign player is the potential access to English football. As for Hernandez the fee for him seems to have been about 800k...... I'm sure we were all quite shocked by that. Its biggest outlay since the 90's and no-one saw it coming. I would love to know more about the deal, I'm sure Atlanta will defo have a finders fee percentage clause but who knows if they are contributing to the transfer fee or wages. Cormack seems canny and is used to working with yanks so there's a good chance this will be a deal that isn't shafting us.
Ultimately I think we would all like to know the full ins and outs of this transfer because whatever else you want to speculate about I think it's pretty unarguable that this represents a HUGE change in transfer strategy. High risk? Well, riskier certainly but I'm not convinced of that. I don't think cormack or the board would be so reckless as to go high risk with the clubs finances. No, I think this is just some very welcome healthy ambition from the club and long may that continue.