Liverpool’s perceived reluctance to buy players during the January transfer window has long been a source of frustration to deal-hungry Reds fans.
More often than not when the winter trading window has opened, the noises coming out of Anfield have usually been that the Reds are not expecting to do much major business.
This has often led to the modern-day version of wailing and gnashing of teeth on social media, which was very much prevalent as January 2022 rolled around.
Many fans held real concerns over what the season’s prospects may look like by the start of February given the departures of stars Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Naby Keita on AFCON duty, and the impact their absence could have on a squad of sometimes-questionable depth given the busy fixture programme, which would include two Carabao Cup semi-finals as well as the start of the FA Cup campaign in addition to important Premier League matches.
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With a Wembley date with Chelsea now booked and Liverpool having slightly cut Manchester City’s lead at the top of the league table, the Reds’ trophy prospects are still alive on four fronts and have been boosted by the £49m arrival of Porto’s 25-year-old Colombian winger Luis Diaz.
The ECHO understands Liverpool are also looking to seal a deal for Fulham’s 19-year-old Portuguese attacking midfielder Fabio Carvalho before Monday night’s 11pm deadline.
One line of Jurgen Klopp’s quotes expressing his delight at Diaz’s arrival - only his ninth winter buy since joining the club in 2015, with only three of them still being at Anfield - alluded to his supposed reticence at doing business during the mid-season window when he said : “I have always been a believer in only signing players in January if you would want to sign them in the summer, and that’s very much the case with Luis. He is an outstanding player and someone we’ve been tracking for a very long time.”
The Liverpool boss has spoken out on previous occasions about the difficulties in sealing deals in January saying last year : “It’s not the easiest transfer window. On top of not having the money exactly like you want, it’s a window where other clubs say, ‘no, we don’t have a lot of money but we don’t need it as well, we are clear, we have enough’."
While in 2017, midway through his first season in charge at Anfield, Klopp said: “It is not about money in this situation, it is the winter transfer window.
“Clubs are saying, ‘no, we have half a year to go, we cannot find another player like this, we prefer to take money in the summer than a few pounds more in the winter than whatever’."
Liverpool have shown again however with Diaz’s arrival that they are prepared to break away from the generally-established best practice if they feel the circumstances justify it - and closer examination of some of the club's most effective transfer deals in recent years shows they have in fact happened in January as you can see below.
Daniel Agger - January 2006
The 21-year-old Danish centre-back arrived for Brondby in January 2006 after Rafa Benitez paid £5.8m and claimed: "He will be a Liverpool centre-back for the next 10 years."
Agger made only four appearances that campaign but soon established himself as cultured ball-playing defender, scoring his first Liverpool goal from 25 yards against West Ham United in September 2006 and bagging a vital strike later in the campaign against Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final to help send the Reds to Athens.
Injuries affected his time at Anfield, with the Dane having only a 2012 League Cup winners medal to show for his efforts, and he returned to Brondby in the summer of 2014 having made 232 appearances, scoring 14 goals, in seven and a half years.
Alvaro Arbeloa / Javier Mascherano - January 2007
Very few Liverpool supporters were familiar with the defensive talents of Arbeloa when he arrived in a surprise £2.64m deal from Deportivo La Coruna, but they certainly were a few weeks later when he marked Lionel Messi out of the game in a famous Champions League win in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium.
The Spanish defender soon became a regular fixture in Benitez’s side, appearing equally as comfortable in either full-back position and also being able to fill in as a centre-back.
The arrival of £18.5m right-back Glen Johnson in the summer of 2009, however, led to speculation over Arbeloa’s future at Anfield and he joined Real Madrid for £5m where he won one La Liga title and two Champions Leagues.
Mascherano, meanwhile, arrived initially on loan from West Ham at the end of the same window.
The vagaries of the third-party ownership deal, which had initially seen him in arrive in east London alongside fellow Argentine Carlos Tevez, meant it would be the following February before he completed his £18.6m move to Merseyside, but by then he had already established himself as a key performer.
Mascherano's dogged, defensive midfield abilities helped Liverpool reach the Champions League final during his loan spell and the next two seasons saw Benitez’s side reach the last-four and last-eight respectively in Europe’s premier cup competition as well as mount the club’s most credible title challenge in nearly two decades in 2009.
The decline which followed, in no small part down to Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s catastrophic ownership of the club, saw Mascherano become disillusioned and he signed for Barcelona in August 2010 for £17.25m where five La Liga titles and two Champions Leagues along with two Club World Cups followed.
Luis Suarez - January 2011
The January 2011 January window was the most dramatic in Liverpool’s modern history with the £50m departure of star striker Fernando Torres to Chelsea and £35m buy of Newcastle’s Andy Carroll taking place on a breathless deadline day.
The signing of 24-year-old Uruguayan forward Suarez in a £22.8m deal for Ajax was also confirmed the same day but almost slipped under the radar initially given the tumultuous nature of Torres’s departure and Carroll’s arrival.
Suarez would go on to have a massive impact at Anfield, scoring 17 times in his first full season and helping Liverpool to a League Cup triumph and FA Cup final appearance.
After scoring 30 goals in 2012/13, he bagged 31 times in 2013/14 as Liverpool went agonisingly close to a first Premier League title but, after a series of off-field misdemeanours, he got his wish of a move to Barcelona that summer where he won four La Liga titles, a Champions League and a World Club Cup.
Daniel Sturridge / Philippe Coutinho - January 2013
Birmingham-born forward Sturridge had broken through at Manchester City before a move to Chelsea which saw Brendan Rodgers pay £12m to bring him to Anfield.
He became the first Liverpool player since Ray Kennedy in 1974 to score his first three appearances for the club and soon established a real rapport with Suarez, their lethal partnership forming the spearhead of the Reds’ unlikely title push in 2014.
A frustrating series of injuries took their toll on Sturridge’s abiliity to feature regularly and when he was loaned out to West Bromwich Albion in January 2018 it appeared his Liverpool career was over.
Klopp's awareness of his unique ability, however, saw the striker feature again for the Reds at the beginning of what would become a very special season in 2018/19, and he scored the opening goal against Paris Saint- Germain that began the victorious road to Madrid, as well as a superb and vital late equaliser at Chelsea before signing for Turkish club Trabzonspor the following summer after his contract expired, leaving him with a record of 67 goals in 160 LFC matches.
The 20-year-old Brazilian attacking midfielder Coutinho arrived at Anfield during the same window as Sturridge and, after an initial settling-in period, added guile and invention to the Reds side over the coming years.
He played a big role in the 2014 title challenge and was one of the few players whose form and consistency held up the following season playing 52 matches and notching eight goals.
He scored 12 times in 2015/16 including memorable strikes against Manchester United in the Europa League and Manchester City in the League Cup final, surpassing that with 14 the following campaign to help Liverpool regain qualification to the Champions League.
Now firmly established as a key part of the attacking line up under Klopp, the first half of the 2017/18 season saw him bag 12 in only 20 games but, with speculation increasingly gathering that he wanted a move to Barcelona, he was sold to the Catalans for £142m in January 2018.
Virgil van Dijk - January 2018
The giant Dutch defender had long been identified as the man to remedy the Reds’ defensive vulnerabilities, especially after his impressive introduction to Premier League football following his move from Celtic to Southampton in 2013.
But a botched attempt to bring him to Anfield in the summer of 2017 saw Liverpool forced to issue an apology to the Saints and withdraw their interest.
Days before the opening of the following January's window, however, it was announced the Reds had agreed a £75m deal for Van Dijk and he was soon unveiled as the club’s record signing, making a dream debut by scoring a late winner in front of the Kop in an FA Cup third-round tie against Merseyside neighbours Everton.
Van Dijk has gone on to become of the most transformative signings of the modern era and played a major role in ending the club’s 30-year wait for a league title as well as bringing the club’s sixth European Cup to Anfield and a first ever Club World Cup.
