Jurgen Klopp has revealed the reasons why Liverpool failed to sign Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia in last summer's transfer window.
The midfield duo both eventually ended up at Chelsea following mega-money moves, with Caicedo costing the Blues a whopping £115million – a British transfer record – while Lavia joined for £58m.
Having lost both Fabinho and skipper Jordan Henderson that summer following their moves to Saudi Arabia, Liverpool were in the market to plug the gap left by the duo and Klopp was keen on signing three players to help replace them.
But their attempts to sign Caicedo and Lavia fell flat on its face, with the pair snubbing the Merseyside club for west London and Klopp has revealed exactly why it played out the way it did.
'We were interested in [Jude] Bellingham but realised it would not happen,' Klopp said when outling his midfield rebuilding strategy. 'The whole market for No 6s went up. Two No 6s left our club.
'We thought we could maybe do Caicedo. We'd already done [Alexis] Mac Allister before. So we went in but he [Caicedo] had an emotional agreement already with Chelsea and Pochettino. Lavia had his own reasons.'
While it may have been a body-blow to miss out on the pair, Klopp insists there was a silver lining to it all and the club were able to find what was actually the best outcome for them.
'Then we found our top solution,' Klopp continued.
'We found Wataru [Endo]. All the time in our mind we had Stefan [Bajcetic]. It was not clear at that moment he was so badly injured he could not feature at all.
'We already knew Macca could play the position. Dom [Szoboszlai] was always on my radar. If one of the £100m [signings] had worked there's no chance to do another.
'That's what I meant when I said we are so lucky. Everything in the "if not" scenario worked out.'
Caicedo is still searching for his best form under Pochettino.
He has shown glimpses of the form he produced with Brighton but is yet to get anywhere close to meriting his extraordinary price tag.
Lavia has also failed to kickstart his career at Chelsea, with the Belgian midfielder struggling to overcome a string of injuries since joining the Blues.
The 20-year-old has featured just once in all competitions since joining Chelsea from Southampton in the summer, making a 32-minute cameo against Crystal Palace at the end of December.