You keep picking that one thing that I said about Rice. I should have said City really didn't want him that badly to pay more than what Arsenal were willing to pay. It's not like Rice is still sitting at West Ham waiting for an offer.
What I've said is that if these players were deemed good enough, then the top clubs would pay whatever it took to get them. There's loads of examples, some right, some wrong. As we saw with Rice, Arsenal wanted him and paid 100m for him, same with Caicedo, same with Grealish. Utd paid whatever it took to get Rooney.
If Baines was in that bracket of being good enough and also being worth the money Everton would have wanted for him, he really would have been picked up by a top team. He wasn't. Utd looked at him, didn't want to pay what Everton wanted or didn't want to pay over the odds for him and then moved onto Shaw a year later.
Bowen is in that same bracket, he's a very good player, I don't deny it, but I think he's just not good enough to step up to a top team, or for a top team to pay the kind of fee West Ham would demand. Even if he were available for 25-30m I very much doubt top clubs would be interested.