Liverpool appear to have finally completed their jigsaw. The final piece, which had obviously fallen behind the skirting board for the last few years, was found and inserted when Alisson Becker was signed from Roma to play in goal.

Not since Ray Clemence in 1967 have Liverpool signed a good goalkeeper although there are probably a couple of Bruce Grobelaar groupies still around who would disagree.

So Jürgen Klopp has now spent an absolute fortune despite saying that he wasn’t the type of manager who would spend an absolute fortune as he disagreed with that way of doing things.

He can now, however, boast a decent defence having finally signed Virgil van Dijk last season after protracted “negotiations” with Southampton over his release. Alongside self-proclaimed world-class defender Dejan Lovren and with Andy Robertson at left back the rearguard looks reasonably good. Add to this the emergence of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez and the future looks bright.

The midfield additions of Naby Keita and Fabinho should ensure that their other new signing, Xherdan Shaqiri, doesn’t feature that much before being sold next summer. Also, the likes of James Milner, Georginio Wijnaldum, Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson now have serious competition for places which may see the departure of at least one of them.

Up front there hasn’t been a problem for a while and, as long as the main three remain injury-free, that state of affairs is likely to continue.

Mohamed Salah’s World Cup tears have now dried even if he hasn’t yet forgiven Sergio Ramos for the tackle which didn’t cause his injury. Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané both had reasonably good World Cups from a personal point of view, if not from that of their teams, but Liverpool do look a little light if any of the trio gets injured.

As back-up there is only Danny Ings, who is looking to move on and Daniel Sturridge who makes Darren Anderton look like the fittest man alive. Xherdan Shaqiri could be considered as an alternative but will probably not score that many goals.

So Liverpool can now field a team containing nine or ten players signed by Jürgen Klopp including the world record fee for a goalkeeper and the world record fee for a defender.

Not too bad for a manager who has now changed his opinion on buying players since he has discovered that it is probably the only way of staying in the top six.

In fact, with the additions made to his squad, Liverpool should certainly be significantly better than City rivals Everton, Arsenal and Chelsea who are all under new managers and the Reds could well be putting pressure on Manchester United for second place next season, if not on Manchester City for top spot.