I'm with DandyGo. It's not just defeatist, it's incompetent.
Anyone with any experience in negotiating knows you need to be able to make a credible threat that if there's no deal, your opponent will be disadvantaged. In this case, the only credible threat to Sydney is 'if you don't make a deal we have another buyer who will give us a good price'. Saying 'we're committed to Sydney' is crazy, because it says 'we'll take the best you can offer'.
As soon as Sydney took their tight-arsed position, we should have solicited offers from Brisbane, GC, and anyone else interested. We should have started dealing with GWS. If another club made a decent offer (decent to us and to Kurt) we have competition, and competition will always lead to a better deal.
The only way I can forgive the club for Harper's statements is if he is sacked, or we are in fact soliciting rival offers behind the scene, or if we have tried to already and failed. In which case we are truly forked and it is fair to start moderating our expectations.