Liverpool are so methodical in their transfer activity that whenever a player is linked with a move to Anfield, you can decide for yourself if the link is legitimate or not with relative certainty.
Take this summer just passed. Had the Reds been said to be interested in Cristiano Ronaldo, 99 percent of Kopites would’ve immediately dismissed the talk without a second thought.
And though only a fraction of the stories may ultimately prove to be accurate in reality, there is clearly a type of player who the Reds tend to target.
You can judge a rumour by the age of the player, what type of football they play, and the level of club they currently play for.
Take Dusan Vlahovic, whom Tuttosport (via The Mirror ) are claiming may be moving to Liverpool, possibly as a long term replacement for Roberto Firmino. It’s a rumour which feels plausible.
READ MORE: Dusan Vlahovic would give Liverpool something they've not had since Fernando Torres
The Serbian forward currently plays for Fiorentina, who have started this season well but have finished somewhere between 10 th and 16 th in each of his three full campaigns with the club.
Take a look at the list of players signed by Liverpool in the Jurgen Klopp era, and there aren’t many top sides listed as the selling club.
Thiago Alcantara joined from Bayern Munich, but he was an outlier in more ways than one (which we’ll get to shortly). The only senior player to have joined from one of the established big six clubs in England was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who left Arsenal to join the Reds in the early weeks of the 2017/18 campaign.
(Liverpool also signed Dominic Solanke from Chelsea, but he was a teenage prospect for the future rather than an immediate first team regular).
Clubs like RB Leipzig – from whom the Reds purchased Naby Keita and Ibrahima Konate – will now rightly claim they are one of the top teams in Germany, having finished in the Bundesliga’s top three in four of the last five years, but they are not a traditional powerhouse.
Liverpool rarely deal with such clubs. Many of their best players from recent times have been signed from the likes of Southampton and Wolves and Monaco and Roma. All good teams, but often found a rung below the elite in their country.
A look at the 30 players who have been signed on Klopp’s watch ( via LFCHistory ) also shows that the club have a very specific age profile which they look for when acquiring new talent.
The only players who were aged over 30 when they signed were all goalkeepers (whose names all began with ‘A’, weirdly). This is what made the transfer of the then 29-year-old Thiago so unusual, as aside from fourth choice centre-back Ragnar Klavan he was Klopp’s only outfield signing who was over the age of 26.
These exceptions aside, Liverpool clearly prefer men in their mid-twenties. Exactly half of the club’s transfers since January 2016 have been between 23 and 25 when they signed on the dotted line, and the players in their bracket account for 68 percent of the gross transfer outlay.
Expand the pool to include those signings who were either 22 or 26 and 90 percent of the club’s spending under Klopp is accounted for.
As Vlahovic will be 22 at the end of this campaign, perhaps we’re seeing a gradual shift in the age of the players Liverpool are now looking to sign? After all, the one squad member who signed at that age is Konate.
Either way, they have tended to go for players in the first half of their career who are looking to take that next step up the career ladder, from a decent club to one of the giants of the sport.
Speculation suggests Vlahovic could be available for a 'cut price fee' in the wake of contract talks stalling with Fiorentina, as his existing deal ticks down to its 2023 end point.
Whether the Reds are genuinely interested in him or not doesn’t matter too much at this point, just that you believe that they could be.
Trusting the transfer process is integral to everything Liverpool hold dear.
