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Sometimes you just like shopping in certain places, so much so that you’ll keep going back there.
And Liverpool like shopping at Southampton. They like it a LOT.
The Reds have signed seven players from the Saints in the Premier League era with five of those coming in the last three years, and a with move for defender Virgil van Dijk seemingly gathering pace after the Dutchman declared that he’d like to join them, they could well be about to bring in another one.
Some of those players proved to be more successful than others, but almost all of them came in for a lot more money than Southampton paid for them.
Because while the Reds like signing players from the Saints, they also like doing so at a considerable mark-up in price.
In fact, if you remove the former Wales goalkeeper Paul Jones - who moved to Anfield from the Saints on an emergency loan deal in 2003 - then Liverpool have always been forced to pay considerably more for the same signing than Southampton did. Six times.
All of which begs the question: Wouldn’t they have been better off making these signings before they’d made the move south?
Well, yes. Obviously.
Here’s how the difference stacks up.
The giant forward set a trend when he left relegated Southampton for Rafael Benitez’s European champions in 2005, and he proved a popular figure at Anfield despite only staying for three years.
The term “fairytale move” was all the rage in the summer of 2014, when Rickie Lambert managed to find his way back to his boyhood club Liverpool some 17 years after he’d been released as a teenager.
We’ll just gloss over what happened when he was there.
There can be little doubt now that Adam Lallana has been a terrific signing for Liverpool, and he’ll surely be in the running for the club’s player of the season in the current campaign.
All of which makes that compensation fee seem worth it for the Saints.
There have been more than a few times when the decision to pay £20m for Lovren looked more than a little crazy, but clearly the Croatian is a player than Jurgen Klopp likes, and he continues to be a key part of Liverpool’s Champions League-chasing defence.
Three seasons of Premier League consistency at Southampton were enough to make Clyne appeal to Brendan Rodgers, and he would prove to be one of the Northern Irishman’s final Liverpool signings when he snapped him up in the summer of 2015.
As with Lallana, you won’t find many people claiming that Liverpool overspent on Sadio Mane after his excellent first season at the club, but if they’d have spotted his talent sooner then they could have ended up saving two-thirds of what they paid for him.
Liverpool could have saved themselves a huge £78.7m if only they’d snapped up their transfer targets before Southampton got there, with the Saints paying a rather measly £23.8m for the same six players.
And with Van Dijk - who Southampton signed for £13m from Celtic in 2015 - set to cost the Reds £50m should he make the move, then that total could swell to a MASSIVE £115.7m.
Players mature at different rates, of course, and it might be that Liverpool didn’t even want them when Southampton were signing them, but maybe it’d just be cheaper for the Reds to sign the Saints’ scouts instead?
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