Michail Antonio says everyone was completely misinformed about the £45 million Liverpool player

Liverpool’s summer transfer business from last summer has once again proven to be an overwhelming success.

The Reds have a brilliant recent record in the market and put that to the test with four more signings to begin the season. The pick of the bunch has arguably been Alexis Mac Allister, who was terrific last night against Luton Town.

Meanwhile, all of Wataru Endo, Ryan Gravenberch and in particular Dominik Szoboszlai have shown their quality, too.

According to West Ham United forward Michail Antonio though, this should not be a surprise. Speaking about the injured Diogo Jota on The Footballer’s Football Podcast, Antonio praised the Reds’ recruitment of recent years, highlighting Jota as an example.

“He’s an absolute joke,” the 33-year-old said of Liverpool’s No.20. “And the craziest thing I like about Liverpool is they buy these players and people at the time are like what are they thinking? Why are they doing that?

“When they signed Mane they were like £30 million for Mane what are you doing? And then Van Dijk. And then Jota, everyone was like what? They all turn out to be absolute class. It’s a masterclass of buying players.”

Liverpool don’t miss in the market

Nowadays, people have simply become used to Liverpool’s relatively shrewd operating in the transfer market. As a result, few are surprised that Mac Allister has slotted in so nicely, for example.

But back in the early days of Jurgen Klopp’s reign, there were certainly some eyebrows raised over the business they were doing.

Sadio Mane is perhaps the best example of this. As Antonio points out, his move from Southampton was seen as an expensive gamble at the time. Six years later Mane left having won just about everything with Liverpool and as one of their best players of the modern era.

Mohamed Salah’s transfer from Roma was another which was seen as a potential risk. But we all know how that turned out.

Come January 2018 and people should have known better by now. But the enormous £75m fee spent on Van Dijk still felt like a lot to pay on a good Premier League performer. Again, history has proven that to be incredibly misguided thinking.

After Van Dijk and a cheap little deal for Stoke City’s Xherdan Shaqiri, the next Premier League signing for Liverpool was Jota.

Just like Mane and Salah before him, there were question marks over whether the then 23-year-old could make the step up from Wolves. But Klopp knew as soon as he saw Jota that he was something special. £45m was a bargain. And so it has turned out.

With so much of the personnel at the club changing this summer, we’ll see if Liverpool can keep this run of hits up. Don’t bet against them and as we’ve learned in the past four years, never bet against our Diogo.