Liverpool have been busy as a bee in the transfer market as we have been smashing records and signing quality players, albeit for a high price.
Alisson joined us for a world-record fee while Naby Keita and Fabinho did not come on the cheap either. We even completed a record transfer for Virgil van Dijk when we signed him in January but if the fans were once cribbing about not getting the players in, now we worry about spending too much.
How things change at Liverpool. There was a time when we were looking for bargain signings such as Charlie Adam and made some rather ludicrous decisions like bringing Stewart Downing in for the same price as Juan Mata when we could have had the Spaniard here.
Scratch all that up now and toss it into the river Mersey. Jurgen Klopp has worked wonders for us but credit has to go to the man behind the German’s back, Michael Edwards.
Our sporting director might not do a lot of talking but he surely gets the job done.
Big players, big money, but all achieved efficiently
It would have been next to impossible for us to beat the likes of Barcelona when we were looking to sign a player a few years ago.
Klopp being our manager does make it an attractive proposition but Edwards doesn’t mess around. We were willing to pay the money for Keita and even paid a premium to sign him for Liverpool one year before he could even play for us.
The same goes for the Van Dijk and Alisson deals. Edwards is willing to quickly finish the negotiations and pay the asking price for players that Klopp wants.
There is no time being wasted on deals and some of them are even coming out of the blue. Liverpool barely have leaks coming out of the transfer committee. The media doesn’t even know who the club might end up signing.
The best example of this was the Fabinho deal. We had just lost the Champions League final and the team went out and bought a defensive midfielder and no one had a clue about the Brazilian joining us. It seems we have learned from our Van Dijk fiasco, as Alisson’s deal was completed rather swiftly.
Edwards has done a wonderful job in bringing quality players in but he seems to be doing an even stellar job when it comes to selling players.
Philippe Coutinho joined Barcelona for a basic fee of £106m which could rise to £142m. This for a player that was cup-tied and had signalled that he wanted to leave. Normally, that would have seen a reduced valuation of the player but that was not the case here.
Incredible prices keep on coming for the Reds – Christian Benteke got us £27m plus add-ons, Mamadou Sakho also got us around £26m while Jordon Ibe, a player that didn’t even shine in the Liverpool first-team, was sold to Bournemouth for a fee of £15m.
Edwards seems to know how to get the most when it comes to selling our players and that is an incredible feat given that some of the players we have sold in recent years have not been at their peak. Benteke was certainly not at his best and Sakho had not played for us for almost half a season.
Despite all the hard work done by Edwards, the sporting director knows that if he does not deliver the players that Klopp wants, the German could leave the club.
I am not claiming that the former Borussia Dortmund manager will pack up and leave if we don’t sign a striker that he wants but there are a number of clubs who have admired Klopp for a long time.
Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or even Barcelona are big clubs that could turn the heads of the best managers but of course, Klopp is different and it seems like he has been made for us.
Read more: Jurgen Klopp plotting ruthless £100million clear-out at Liverpool – report
Edwards isn’t flashy, doesn’t make too many comments and lets the club do their thing while he does his. It is a refreshing change to see Liverpool actually be aggressive in buying and selling players.
This season cannot come fast enough and with things falling into place, sky is the limit for Klopp, Edwards and the boys.
