Timing is so often everything in football, as it is in life.
There are numerous example of signings arriving at Liverpool at just the right moment for both player and club to take advantage of the direction of travel in a mutually beneficial way, most recently perhaps the transformative acquisitions of Virgil Van Dijk and Alisson Becker who in successive 2019 transfer windows helped take Jurgen Klopp’s Reds from nearly men to proven winners.
It can of course work the other way. Gerard Houllier’s decision to not to make Nicolas Anelka’s loan permanent and instead bring in El-Hadji Diouf proved a fatal turning point in the Frenchman’s reign while many of Liverpool’s summer 2014 arrivals found themselves caught up in and unable to reverse the trend of the psychological hangover lingering around L4 after that year’s exhilarating but ultimately devastating failed Premier League title bid.
