For Jurgen Klopp, there is only one similarity between the summers of 2018 and 2022.
Four years ago, in the days and weeks after the Champions League final loss to Real Madrid in Kiev, Liverpool would embark on the biggest spending summer in their history to bring Fabinho, Alisson Becker, Naby Keita and Xherdan Shaqiri to Anfield.
A total that came in just shy of £170m gave the Reds added depth and a new look as the big fees were paid out to land Fabinho (£40m), Alisson (£65m) and Keita (£52m), in particular, to bolster a squad that had added £75m Virgil van Dijk to its ranks at the beginning of that same calendar year.
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To many, it was the summer that turned Liverpool from pretenders to contenders. Within 12 months they were Champions League holders for a sixth time. Two years later, they lifted the Premier League crown while in possession of the titles of European and world champions.
Four years on and, while Liverpool have not spent anywhere near as much as they did in the aftermath of that defeat to Real Madrid, another Champions League final loss to the Spaniards was the prequel to a big-money transaction in the form of Darwin Nunez, a player whose total outlay could reach a club-record £85m. Klopp, though, says the only pattern is that the club moved to bring in the players it felt would ultimately elevate the team further.
"What it shows [is] we didn’t sign the boys because we lost the Champions League final, neither then nor now," the Reds boss says. "When people say this is our last season to improve, then they will probably say, 'yes, you missed out in the two biggest competitions, you didn’t win them [last season]'. But of course we know there is luck involved and other things.
"I say we can improve performance-wise, we can mix it up better, we can be different in moments, we can be more convincing in moments, we can be calmer in moments, more lively in moments, all these kinds of things, that is obvious.
"When we go through the games last season and in the break, you can see that, of course in moments you can say we lost against West Ham and we lost against Leicester and we should have won at Tottenham, all these kinds of things, but that is not what we are talking about."
Just four defeats across a 63-game campaign surely indicates that Liverpool have no real cause for major concern heading into the new term. But in a season that promised so much in its final throes, it was only disappointment that greeted them in late May as Manchester City just about did enough to secure themselves the title before that defeat to Madrid in Paris.
And while the biggest honours are often decided by the small margins, Klopp has the foresight to believe they can be made up with finetuning this pre-season.
"It is about the way we play, we have to do the right stuff again and again and again and that is what I am really looking forward to," adds the Liverpool manager. "We have to use this short period of [pre-season] time now.
"This first week was really good, it looks like the future is really bright, the kids are outstanding, they are training with us. It is outstanding to see them, they ask, ‘wow, are you really 17?’ That is really cool to see, we take them now with us."
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