The Liverpool juggernaut just keeps on rolling, with success breeding success for the Reds.
Clearly, Jurgen Klopp must take most of the credit for moulding the team into European and English champions, but he has been helped by his studious signings of course.
There’s little doubt that Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker have been two of the chief reasons why Liverpool have been so solid at the back for the most part over the last two seasons, although former Red’s centre-back and now Sky Sports pundit, Jamie Carragher believes Sadio Mane’s capture was the real catalyst for success.
“[Mane] was the catalyst for what happened at Liverpool,” Carragher said during his Sky Sports commentary on Wednesday, and cited by the Daily Star.
“Yes, we’ve had [Virgil] van Dijk and Alisson, but he was the first big name to come in.
”I absolutely love him, he’s my favourite player at the club. He’s brilliant, he’s always got a smile on his face, always there, always gets knocked about, gets goals, setting others up.
“He’s the one who came in at the very start under Klopp, his first real big signing, and I think ever since then he’s just been getting better and better. He’s just a machine.”
From where Liverpool were when Klopp arrived to where they are now is markedly different, and every project needs to have its start point of course.
It could be said that Mane’s hire was the one that perhaps convinced other players to come along for the ride at a point when the Reds looked anything but title winners.
Since then, he and his team-mates have never looked back, and Liverpool look primed for an era of dominance.