Ladies and gentlemen, Liverpool are back on their perch.
If the Reds winning the Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup and Premier League in recent years wasn’t enough to convince you of their newfound status under Jurgen Klopp, their latest transfer activity should hammer such a fact home once and for all.
Luring Luis Diaz to Anfield for an initial £37.5m is a sensational deal for the club to complete. Even with all the add-ons, taking the potential outlay to £49m, it seems a relatively meagre spend on such a highly-rated talent - even in this pandemic-ridden transfer market we’ve witnessed over the past two years.
Given the success of a plethora of A-list names who have left Porto for big-money fees since they became European champions themselves back in 2004, Liverpool ’s recruitment team can be confident they’ve landed a quality addition.
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But what is most telling about the arrival of the Reds’ latest recruit is how he had seemed destined to join Tottenham Hotspur until the 11th hour.
With the Colombian a target for the summer, Liverpool made their move for the winger when realising that if they didn’t act in January, they’d miss out on his signature altogether.
The Reds’ move to sign Diaz has not gone down well in North London according to a report in The Telegraph , with Spurs chairman Daniel Levy - who first found out about the news on Thursday - said to be furious over the way Liverpool’s recruitment team scuppered their own chances of signing the 25-year-old.
Going on to suggest Levy even threatened to report the Reds recruitment team to club principal owner John W. Henry and Mike Gordon, the report added that any complaint would have proven futile as FSG were actually “delighted” with the strategy used by Liverpool in their pursuit to bring Diaz to Anfield.
Spurs had been willing to match the Reds’ offer for the winger but when Liverpool made their move, his mind was made up. Diaz was moving to Merseyside.
Considering the Reds are in the Champions League knockout stages, competing for the Premier League title and in a League Cup final whereas Tottenham, well aren’t, lie seventh in the table and were knocked out of the Europa Conference League last month, it is no surprise that Anfield is currently a more attractive destination than the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.
And with Liverpool’s status as one of the very best sides in Europe very much secure, with not even a severe defensive injury crisis last year stopping them from qualifying for the Champions League, they have enjoyed such a pull for a number of years.
It is something Tottenham simply can’t compete with.
After all, Spurs have been on the decline ever since they lost to Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League final, dropping down the continental competitions and failing to end their silverware drought that extends back to 2008. Meanwhile, their drop down the Premier League table dates back to finishing second in 2017 - finishing third, fourth, sixth and seventh in the past four seasons.
Levy’s annoyance is equally understandable with January proving to be a frustrating month for Tottenham on the transfer front.
They might be closing in on a double swoop for Juventus’ Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur from Juventus, but Dias is not the only player Spurs have missed out, with Adama Traore another high-profile target who slipped through their fingers.
With Levy seemingly taking out his frustrations on the Reds in the most bratty of manners as a result, he should take note of Liverpool’s actions instead with it easy to forget how regularly they found themselves in a similar position before Klopp’s Anfield transformation.
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Pursuits for the likes of Diego Costa, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Alexis Sanchez and Mario Gotze were all ultimately unsuccessful, while the Reds even missed out on deals for Mohamed Salah , Willian and Alex Teixeira.
Sometimes it was a player’s choice, the individual not interested in signing for a club not certain to be competing in the Champions League. Other times it was financial, with Reds unable to agree a transfer fee or stump up wage demands.
It was the reality of Liverpool’s situation at the time, as they found themselves unable to compete with domestic and continental rivals on the transfer front at the time.
And that included Tottenham with Levy managing to bring in the likes of Dele Alli, Clint Dempsey, Ben Davies and Gylfi Sigurdsson despite facing rival interest from the Reds.
Liverpool were left forced to turn their attentions elsewhere during this period. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. For every Sadio Mane, there was a Mario Balotelli.
But finally under Klopp’s watch, they got it right. And it didn’t involve any petty sulking from FSG along the way.
Having faith in their manager and their recruitment team, the Reds’ American owners have gradually transformed Liverpool’s fortunes to ensure they no longer regularly suffer that familiar sinking feeling when missing out on a desired signing.
Now rather than bemoan the Reds’ actions, Levy should learn from how they have orchestrated their rise instead.
Tottenham only find themselves in this situation now because of his failure to successfully oversee their own rise to the top.
They briefly threatened to, of course, under Mauricio Pochettino, when they challenged for the Premier League title and lost to Liverpool in the Champions League final.
But these ‘glory years’ came and went without any trophies, and left behind a mess of a transfer strategy as star players left and big funds were poorly spent on inferior talents.
You only need to look at their efforts to offload Bryan Gil, Tanguy Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso this month, having spent over £100m on the trio since losing the 2019 Champions League final as proof of that.
And they even went the entire 2018/19 season without signing a single player in the perfect example of them getting caught standing still.
Tottenham could have been a contender had they been managed better both on and off the pitch in recent years.
Instead, their failings ensured there was only one decision for Diaz to make when Liverpool’s interest was made known.
Levy can blame Reds bosses all he wants for missing out on his latest target but the real fault for the Tottenham chief lies an awful lot closer to home.
