The redshift-distance relationship does not contain fudges, or magic slow downs. It shows the rate of expansion was not constant, but started fast and was slowing down for a long time. I'm not talking about any hypothetical inflation, I'm talking about what we have actually observed to have happened since.

At the large scales we use the redshift of light to derive how much the size of the universe has scaled up since that light was emitted. When we plot this relationship we see that the rate of expansion was slowing down for the first 7 billion years of the history of the universe.

If you want to replace the expansion of the universe with the contraction of matter in a static universe, you have to find a mechanism to explain the changing rate of contraction. Gravity slows expansion so we have that mechanism already in an expanding universe.