I’m sure this completely uncontroversial statement won’t cause a bunch of heads to fall off among a certain segment of Liverpool Twitter.
Contrary to what a certain segment of transfer-obsessed pissbabies will tell you on Twitter, Liverpool’s transfer policy under FSG, and especially under Jurgen Klopp, has been an unmitigated success.
Whether the club has spent big for the best in the world, like with Virgil van Dijk or Alisson Becker, gotten bargain basement deals, like with Andy Robertson and (in retrospect) Mohamed Salah, gotten stellar free transfers, like with Joel Matip or James Milner, or simply chose to promote promising academy talents, like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones, you can point to almost each and every player in the current squad as a key component for Liverpool’s recent on-field success.
Following the recent transfer of Luis Diaz, and two impressive displays from the new signing so far, Jurgen Klopp elaborated on Liverpool’s transfer strategy.
“There’s no key, I don’t think, apart from having smart people in the right positions – but I’m pretty sure other teams do have that as well,” Kloppo explained.
“So, first and foremost, I love the fact and I’m pretty sure it will be a success with Luis [Diaz] but we should not judge him after one game, so we should not praise the recruitment, whatever. But I know what you mean.
“So, the boys we brought in, there were no bargains. It’s not that Ali was not really expensive – OK, I think today everybody would say, ‘Yes, that was at least the price I would have paid for him if I would have known how good he is.’ Similar to Virgil. Then we brought Fabinho in, we brought Naby Keita in, we brought Sadio in, Mo in, so many players.”
Objectively, our recruitment has been nothing short of stellar.
And, in order to even come close to competing with the likes of Manchester City, it has had to be. On this point, Klopp also discussed the tricky position Liverpool are in, especially when competing with clubs that can—and often do—take much more of a lottery approach to high-profile, expensive signings.
“It’s a wealthy club with no problems but the policy here is clear – we spend what we earn. If we earn more, we can spend more. If we earn less, we can spend less.
“It means not that we can do nothing but for us it’s very important that we have to do absolutely the right thing and we have to think once about it, twice about it, three times about it and maybe a fourth time about it. And if we think the fifth time about it, the player might go to another club – but we cannot change that.
“That’s what we did so far. The club had incredible free transfers with James [Milner] and Joel [Matip], and we brought real talents in with Robbo and other guys. We have our own boys, players were already here before I came and all these kind of things. It’s a mix of everything.”
Did Twitter need another goal-post-moving, disingenuous “net spend” argument? No, but we’ll get it again with these comments. And don’t worry, they’ll never let facts or logic get in the way of their agenda.
Some out there believe, somehow, that what Liverpool need—despite having the best, most complete squad in at least several decades—is MORE SIGNINGS!!!1! When the reality is that Liverpool don’t need more signings, but the right signings.
Because the wrong signing, for a club that isn’t backed by a sovereign state with the intentions of sportswashing their human rights record, can be the difference between competing for trophies, and competing for a spot in the Champions League (or worse).
