A year ago Liverpool and football in general were in a very different place.
Having gone into the 2020/21 campaign as Premier League champions, blowing teams away with what seemed relative ease, the Reds found out success would be markedly different in the season that followed as the injury blows of losing Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip from their defensive line took their toll.
At the turn of the year the Reds' wretched form was creating the very real chance that Champions League football was beyond them.
Supporters looked to January in the hope that owners Fenway Sports Group would free up the necessary funds to bring in new additions to bolster their jaded squad and give them the best chance of ensuring that at least elite European qualification would be attained, if nothing else.
But only Ben Davies from Preston North End for £1.5m and Ozan Kabak on loan from the Bundesliga's bottom side, Schalke 04, would arrive, much to the chagrin of Reds fans who had been expecting more than was delivered.
Thankfully, the likes of Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams stepped up to the plate and allowed for Jurgen Klopp to squeeze just enough juice out of his squad to put together a strong run of form when it mattered down the final stretch, and a season that threatened to end in disaster was salvaged with at least the comfort of Champions League qualification and a third placed finish.
But it wasn't so much smart decision making to keep faith in inexperience at such a crucial time, it was a gamble that could have backfired and damaged Liverpool's financial muscle in seasons to come.
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Had there been no Champions League football secured then some of what has happened, and what may happen, could have been off the agenda.
Would FSG have been emboldened to offer their core stars new and improved deals, would the flexibility to even engage Mohamed Salah in new talks over a bumper new deal have got off the ground? Would they have been as keen to spend in the January window?
Champions League football is a vital lifeblood to any top side. You only have to see how Arsenal's continued absence from it in recent years has hampered them, and Tottenham Hotspur's inability to truly crack the top four has seen them miss out on a host of targets, with Luis Diaz more keen to make the move to Liverpool believing them able to match his own ambitions, with much of that attached to the Champions League. Even Porto wanted the Liverpool deal owing to the fact that they felt add-ons related to the Champions League would be far harder to guarantee than they would be with the Reds.
But it isn't just the Champions League qualification that has given FSG more confidence, confidence that is expected to see them active in the summer when the transfer window opens once again.
There is now more certainty over a number of things that there wasn't at the back end of 2020 and early into 2021.
That 2020/2021 season was one played behind closed doors. Clubs and broadcasters alike were concerned that the absence of fan would be to the detriment of the product. For the clubs the concern was that with a new TV cycle to be negotiated the interest may have waned and the dial would have headed in the wrong direction when it came to the amount of money that would be paid to secure the rights.
But the vaccination programme was rolled out and stadiums began to open up once more there was some confidence in the enduring fandom of football. Other factors such as commercial deals and merchandising sales also held up well for Liverpool, with consumer confidence returning in 2021 after plummeting during the 2020 following the onset of the pandemic.
Losses will be incurred when the Reds publish their financial accounts for the 2020/2021 financial year, with the ECHO expecting them to be made public by the end of February, but there is a genuine bullishness that football has ridden out the current storm and that predicting the financial future will be an easier task moving forward.
FSG love financial certainty, and the more of that they have the more they are likely to pledge to investing in the first team.
Arguably the biggest boost to the owners' confidence came through the TV rights renegotiations.
When Sky TV, BT Sport and Amazon Prime Video were revealed to be rolling over their rights for another three years at the same price paid for the previous three (around £5bn) there was genuine relief from club owners who were able to at least tread water.
But the international market provided them with the panacea to what had ailed them. For the first time in Premier League history the value of TV rights internationally was worth more than it was domestically. The US TV deal, for example, had been expected to land at around £1.2bn over six years. What actually happened was a bidding war that went to a second round, with NBC paying £2bn over the next six years to screen 380 Premier League games a season.
Add into that significant rises in broadcasting revenues to be paid in most territories bar China and Premier League deal is now worth more than £10bn.
That, allied with UEFA looking for £4bn in broadcasting revenues from their next cycle when it goes to tender for the Champions League and Europa League rights, with the vast majority heading to the former, and owners of the biggest teams aren't too far off getting the kind of deal that they wanted before they decided to push the button with the doomed European Super League plot in April of last year.
FSG's move for Diaz was born from having far more confidence in the long term financial health of the club and the Premier League than they did at the turn of 2021, and it also was aided by knowing they were getting a great financial deal with Diaz, signing a player with world class potential for £18m less than the release clause that Porto had in place.
Liverpool knew Porto needed money and they were willing to pay €8m as soon as Diaz had completed his medical so Porto could pay their creditors and avoid further UEFA sanctions having been landed with a €300,000 fine for overdue payables in December.
The Reds, for now, missed out on Fabio Carvalho.
But the willingness to do another exciting deal in a window where nothing was planned shows that there is ambition that has shown itself once again due to increased confidence in the financials.
The confidence should hold out and see Liverpool active once more as they seek to execute a succession plan for some members of their squad.
The financial way of FSG won't change. It has always been an ownership group that seeks to create value through the growth of a business and not saddling it with massive debt and heavy losses. But they emerge from the pandemic with far more certainty over the future than they had 12 months ago, and that will directly impact what they do in the transfer market with Liverpool.
