Jurgen Klopp’s feelings on squad sizes are clear.
On multiple occasions during his tenure at Anfield, the German has expressed a desire to work with a small group of players.
"The solution cannot be to have a much bigger squad for the specific moment and then realise you cannot use all the players," the Reds boss said at the end of the 2019/20 season.
"These players can only play the football they play because they know they are needed. They are all human beings and nobody can be held back for a year and then on the last day of the year be told, ‘Now we need you.’
"We cannot keep someone in the backyard and bring them up in the decisive moment. That will not help. We will have solutions for that, we have young players.
"The size of the squad is not that important to me, the quality of the squad is very much so."
The logic is simple: the more you have, the more people there are to keep happy, and the more the youth academy is limited in its usefulness.
In a normal summer, the likes of Marko Grujic, Harry Wilson and Xherdan Shaqiri would have departed. The Reds were open to selling all three at the right price and could have made at least £70 million in transfer fees on the trio, and yet now face the prospect of none of them leaving on a permanent basis.
Premier League clubs would have been queueing around the block for Wilson, Grujic has admirers across Europe, and Shaqiri had interest from the likes of Sevilla and Roma earlier in the year.
Should the trio stay - and Liverpool’s current stance is that they will only be sold permanently or otherwise kept around - then the Reds’ squad will already have swelled.
With fixtures piled in closer together next season, that may well be needed, but Klopp will not want that in excess.
An additional player for the forward line - with Ismaila Sarr one that the Reds admire - has been mooted, while links to Thiago Alcantara persist.
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Bringing in new faces - one of which could easily have been Timo Werner in different circumstances - is never a bad thing for freshening up the team.
As discussed on the Blood Red podcast: "You would think that is something that is probably on the agenda, but it probably depends on one or two players leaving.
"Shaqiri is at the club but if he was to leave ahead of next season, there is almost an argument that you wouldn’t need to replace him because he played so few minutes last season.
"It’s a case of not having too many players as well. It’s about affordability, but it’s also about squad size.
"We know that Klopp likes to have a relatively tight group and he doesn’t like to have loads of excess players around the edge. It is a case of balancing that as much as balancing the cost.
"If you look in midfield, there has not been any progression on Grujic leaving the club at this stage. They have put a price-tag on him and would be open to him departing, but what if he is still there next season?
"Would you go out and buy another midfielder? Probably the answer is ‘no’.
"There’s been links with Divock Origi and players like that which we have discussed plenty of times, and we are still not sure what the future will hold for Rhian Brewster.
"It’s a case of balancing out that jigsaw and at the moment it is very difficult for Liverpool to get the money that they would want for those players on the edge of the squad - not just Shaqiri and Origi, but players like Grujic and Wilson as well."
Selling to buy might seem like an unnecessarily risk-averse move, but the club's proven winning strategy has been as much about balancing the squad as it is about balancing the books.
COVID-19 has meant Liverpool, and indeed all clubs, have lost revenue streams, but they have also lost the chance to sell some assets. For a club who sell as well Liverpool do, that has hit particularly hard.
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