Speaking of the unpredictability of this summers striker market, it’s still quite amazing me Hertha got £18M from Krasnodar for 28 year old Jhon Córdoba (only one year after buying him for £13M).
His year was disrupted with injuries, yet evidently Krasnodar saw something they liked.
Would the consensus from supporters have been happy with £18M for Origi?
Extremely. My hopes for getting that much frankly came and went weeks ago.
(Though of course by way of comparison, I’m sure Córdoba is on significantly lower wages.)
You really evaluating our baseline from our finish position last year where we were crippled by injuries? Tad unfair no?
Imagine, suspend belief for a minute
…
18 year old midfielder with Dortmund, looking like a real player. Monitored by Chelsea, Bayern and a few more.
On the market this summer for £60m and we sign him.
His name is Harvey Elliot.
See, the window is much better already. .
Equally, our front four could do with some depth up front so we pay £10m to sign a 26yr old who doesn’t get a game for one of our rivals, doesn’t really offer much and probably won’t play a great deal for us either. 
That being said, there are very few deals that our rivals have done that I’m envious of in the context of our squad.
Saul to Chelsea on loan with option to buy. Sambi Lokonga looks a good prospect at Arsenal. Soumare and Daka at Leicester could develop nicely. Sancho maybe, but not at his reported wages. Other than those, and really only Saul for definite, I don’t think any other signings would really dovetail particularly well with our squad.
Put it this way, if one of our rivals had signed Konaté instead of us, that would be the transfer I’d be most jealous of. By a distance.
Gini left and we have three aging midfielders.
Who would I buy? Jude Bellingham.
I am sure Dortmund won’t sell him next summer but we can wait until 2023.
What’s important is that we already work on that behind the scenes.
He is a good kid and said Stevie is his biggest idol.
Will be a huge fee but at least he doesn’t have one of those star agents - so won’t be crazy wages for a start.
While I don’t entirely disagree, one quibble I have:
Who are the Bundesliga/2. Bundesliga equivalent of Blackburn?
Agreed.
Now that the Camavinga boat has sailed (until he gets fed up of the splinters in his backside), Bellingham would be my next priority for midfield… although a Bellingham, Elliott, Jones midfield wouldn’t be the most defensively minded.
Hamburg
Can you elaborate? 
Traditional powerhouse that sunk like a rock due to years of mismanagement.
barring any Covid disruptions and that fan attendance and revenue forecasting can have more clarity, I think we will invest in players this coming summer instead. I strongly feel we will buy Andy Carroll.
In any case, what I want to say is that every single transfer window, every summer, even in our CL and PL title winning seasons, there will always be people who thought we should have strengthen by buying players the previous season. Klopp and the club has proven these people wrong more than once. Would it necessarily happen every time? Maybe not. But there is a DNA, a culture, a strategy that the owners, Klopp and the club are trying to build and perhaps what we could do is really to appreciate what they are trying to do from a wider perspective. Yes we all want success for Liverpool Football Club both off the field and on the field. And buying players every single window is not the only way to succeed.
I’d recommend that you stop judging our transfers by the $ amount spent, and instead judge by the quality of players we bring… If you feel better by knowing Elliot is worth much higher than the $ we spent for him and he’s now back in the club, then I leave you to your own doing…
The facts remain we’re paying more for worse players, as the squad gets older and will soon decline.
Question is whether we as a club, will continue to strive for more and the CL and PL were a taste of things to come and more ambitions to be fulfilled, or are we perfectly comfortable to be 1-time PL winner?
If indeed he rejected Liverpool for more playing time to develop at his own pace, then I think that kid has a good level head on his shoulder. Good move and I hope he can come here in time to come!
Of course, with a lower baseline its much easier to overdeliver 
Not just the two powerhouse who finished higher, but also the CL winner btw, all of whom have reinvested their winning into the squad.
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[gasband]
In any case, what I want to say is that every single transfer window, every summer, even in our CL and PL title winning seasons, there will always be people who thought we should have strengthen by buying players the previous season. Klopp and the club has proven these people wrong more than once. Would it necessarily happen every time? Maybe not. But there is a DNA, a culture, a strategy that the owners, Klopp and the club are trying to build and perhaps what we could do is really to appreciate what they are trying to do from a wider perspective. Yes we all want success for Liverpool Football Club both off the field and on the field. And buying players every single window is not the only way to succeed.
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Exactly. While I appreciate what the team is building, I do hope it doesn’t get into complacency or us simply satisfied being a 1-time winner. We need to be smart and continue building into the squad.
While no overhaul is necessary give we have a strong core already, but we need to continue striving
If Milner and maybe one of Ox/Keita leaves next summer we will need a new CM next summer.
Expecting us to go for one of our previous targets like Bissouma.
But with Bellingham it’s important to create a similar situation like Real did with Mbappe. Players only wants a certain Club no matter how long it might take.
So, hope we are already working on ‚Bellingham only wants Liverpool’.
Not sure how a club could work towards making a specific player want to go to that club on its own. It’s as much dependent on the player and what he wants to achieve, how patient he is or how his thought process has developed over the years.
You cannot change the location of the club or the history of the club. What you can do is have a very nice structure in place, where you have a manager who appreciates your talent, merit is awarded and the club wins stuff. We have all of that. But if the player is more interested in the glamour, insanely high wages, being a star in the team then you cannot change the club’s approach and ethos to suit such players.
So if he is mitten by Liverpool, well and good. If not, it’s not entirely the club’s fault.
All the Barca fans wondering how their club ended up where it is can look to themselves. Demands for instant gratification like juveniles is what makes clubs abandon long-term sustainability.
One day Abramovich will abandon Chelsea, Abu Dhabi will abandon City and the al-Thanis will abandon PSG. On those days the respective clubs will be in deep shit.
To point at those clubs and say why aren’t we competing with them in the market? I mean how does one even begin to answer that question. We should be benchmarking ourselves against the likes of Dortmund who’ve found a way to compete sustainably.
And to point at United - all I’ll say is that if the Glazers are doing something then I’m glad they’re not doing it to us. They are leveraging the brand, but brands can collapse in the blink of an eye. United thinks it’s still great, but it’s really not. One day, it’ll blow up in all their faces big time.