@Robby:
The 989 spread is a spread, while the Jinbei joins scene is a splash shot. It fits the layout better.
You can move all the strawhat pcitures to just a top bar but that leaves a LOT of empty space, weird word balloon placement, (even the piece they used they had to throw an awkward graphic over the bottom balloon) you have to shrink the image instead of leaving it at full size, and means Nami, Robin and Usopp are tiny.
https://i.ibb.co/vPq9PxL/group.jpg
Also, the anime will be getting to the Jinbe joining scene shortly, the material of chapter 976 should be soonish depending on how they pad things out a lot… while 989... won't be for four months after that, not till summer at the earliest. And some fans ARE anime only.
Plus, THAT scene is probably going to get merchandised like crazy, I'll be amazed if there isn't a full figure set recreating the 989 scene.
The merch may not mean anything. Or it could mean something.
Either way, I don't agree with the logic in this post.
You say they couldn't pick 989 because Robin would be too small, yet we don't see her face at all in the 976 image. Chopper's back is also turned.
And in either case it's spoilers for anime-only fans. Spoilers are spoilers.
Plus, the image could be better edited to address the points you made. For one, they would probably put a border of 5 on the top and 5 on the bottom with half the width.
And the blank space wouldn't need to remain empty - they could fill in with a pattern or something as they did for the images on the side which were borrowed from different points in the manga and in Nami's case, the cover of volume 91.
Plus the 'Straw Hat Crew' banner would need to fit in somewhere.
I just don't think this post proves in any way that 989 wasn't a viable alternative.