Liverpool have completed the signing of Darwin Nunez for a club-record £85 million from Benfica further strengthening the team after a great season.
Not only was this Liverpool’s most expensive signing, surpassing Virgil Van Dijk at £75 million, it is also the most money any English club has spent this window.
But more significantly, Darwin Nunez’s arrival puts an emphatic end to the underdog narrative surrounding Liverpool since Jurgen Klopp took charge.
For whatever reason, it is important to Liverpool as a club, its fans and most especially the head coach to come across as an overachieving team.
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The under-achieving myth
As far as Jurgen Klopp is concerned, he and his Liverpool are the good guys, doing it the right way while every other team, especially Manchester City continues to ruin the game.
This is not some straw man argument or made-up notion about Klopp, his own words and general demeanour back up this point to the letter.
When Manchester United spent £89 million to sign Paul Pogba from Juventus back in 2016, Klopp responded by saying, “the day that this is football, I'm not in a job anymore.”
Six years on from that unnecessarily public criticism, the same man has put his sanctimonious mindset aside and splashed a similarly outrageous sum on a player, just £4 million less than the one he criticised.
Welcome to the dark side
Not only has this Nunez deal exposed Klopp as a hypocrite, but it also means the German can no longer complain about transfer fees.
Knowing the German, he probably will still complain a whole lot but at least transfers can now be ruled out of his endless list of things to whine about.
Mind you, this is not Klopp’s first rodeo either, before signing Nunez, he had already spent around £600 million on transfers since taking the reins at Anfield in 2015.
He has spent in the past and has of course been good value for it as the German manager has completely transformed Liverpool into one of the best teams in the world.
All of that is true and Klopp deserves his credit, this is not an anti-Klopp campaign or tirade against big transfer fees.
But it would be nice to see Jurgen admit that just like every other big team, Liverpool have to spend to compete, acceptance of that fact does not in any way diminish his accomplishments.