Hey... you're right
Like I had any doubts ;-)
I did the calcs and the dv for the Io circularisation burn was ~ 8 km/s after aerobraking, while the dv for a direct burn into Io orbit was ~ 8.8 km/s. So effectively no saving (< 10%) for a whole load of pain. Damn... that is surprising!
As a pedantic point of pseudo-fact would the "Leonov" and the "Tsien" survive their fiery plunges?
Adam