Last summer, Liverpool pinpointed Aurelien Tchouameni as the player to accelerate the evolution of their midfield. But when the Frenchman instead opted to join Real Madrid, the Reds chose not to look elsewhere - it was either the right signing or none.
This summer, Liverpool pinpointed Jude Bellingham as the player to accelerate the evolution of their midfield. Now, though, the Reds have chosen to step away from the pursuit - instead of the right signing, they intend to make several others.
Matters, of course, are rarely quite so black and white. But the reversal of approach taken by Jurgen Klopp and the Liverpool recruitment team will not have passed unnoticed by supporters furiously debating the decision to essentially give up on any attempt to prise Bellingham away from Borussia Dortmund in the forthcoming transfer window.
FULL STORY: Why Liverpool have stepped away from Jude Bellingham transfer after long pursuit
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Costing in excess of £100million, the 19-year-old England international was never going to be cheap. However, the general consensus - influenced by the vibe emanating from Liverpool and the player himself - was that the Reds were in the box seat. Reports in Spain had as recently as last week suggested Real Madrid were already cooling their own interest as a consequence.
Now this.
Technically, it might still be that Bellingham ends up at Anfield in the future. He has more than two years remaining on his deal, is still in the formative stages of what he hopes will be a long career, and neither he nor Dortmund are in any rush to part ways.
That, though, does nothing to solve an issue at Liverpool that has been festering ever since Tchouameni chose to head to the Bernabeu rather than Anfield almost 12 months ago.
Rather than look elsewhere, Klopp gambled on getting one more season out of his current midfield. It backfired. First Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, then Curtis Jones, Thiago Alcantara and Naby Keita picked up injuries before the summer transfer window had even closed. Arthur Melo, brought in on loan at the last minute as extra engine room cover, then suffered his own serious fitness setback. And Jordan Henderson and Fabinho, already overworked from the previous campaign, fell off the cliff in terms of form and energy levels.
If it could go wrong for Klopp, it did. And Liverpool simply haven't recovered.
While in retrospect the injury issues to certain players was to be expected, the drop from in particular Fabinho was not. But a Klopp team has always been a collective - once certain key parts fail, the whole machine starts creaking to a halt. A delicate balancing act, if it wobbled alarmingly in 2020/21, this season it has keeled over completely.
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Liverpool, then, cannot afford a repeat of their engine room inaction of last year. They have long known there is plenty of work to do in the summer - two midfielders, if not more, will be brought in - but by ending hopes of imminently signing Bellingham, they have increased significantly the pressure going into a huge transfer window, the first without any major input from Michael Edwards and one which, with his successor Julian Ward departing in the coming months, will have a new sporting director at the helm. Talk about a baptism of fire.
With Champions League football unlikely to be a lure this time around, the job will be that bit more difficult for the recruitment team. Yes, players will still want to come to Anfield. Klopp himself remains almost as big a draw as the club itself. But Reds boss, as at the start of his reign, will have to sell a vision of the future rather than the reality of the present. Liverpool have come full circle under the German.
Some fans will point to the club having stepped away from interest in Virgil van Dijk in 2017 and Alisson Becker the following year before ultimately sealing both transfers. Those situations, though, were markedly different to the one involving Bellingham.
Walking away from the England man isn't an embarrassment. In terms of what is required for the Reds this summer, it makes complete sense, Fenway Sports Group not possessing - at least for now - the heavyweight funds of some of their fellow Premier League owners. The Reds will once again have to be smart in their transfer dealings.
Bellingham was the right player for Liverpool. Now the Reds have to prove he isn't the only one. A big summer has just got that much bigger.
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