From what I can muster, the delay was with us not being happy with the deal. It might sound a lot, but Bournemouth will get around 6.5m of that, and I can guarantee that another £3-5m or so will be based on non-guaranteed add-ons. So potentially, we may only net 14m from this.
The stories were always that we wanted to ensure we made a net of £20m on any deal - so clubs would need to be bidding upwards of £30m for him. It seems as if the club have stuck their feet in the ground hoping for more, Liverpool clearly weren't going to pay more, Lallana really wanted the move so threw everything out of the pram and effectivley went on strike - which kind of forced the club to accept the best of a bad bunch of Liverpool offers.
That's my take on it.