We're fortunate to be in a position where Klopp is leaving a fairly young and complete squad. If the new manager uses Quansah and Bradley and both continue to improve (there's no reason to expect otherwise) then we're fairly set in defence. I'd like a left sided centre back but if we didn't buy one I don't think it would be panic stations.
Midfield is a similar story. For all of the discourse about the need for a proper DM (Palhinha has passed away. RIP u will live on forever. Cant believe it. I wanna run to u. Really cant believe this), it's going to be very difficult to upgrade on MacAllister and in all honesty even if we could, it's likely not moving the needle all that much. Outside of that we're full of young, talented players who will all continue to improve, and I'm sure Alonso, De Zerbi or whoever it ends up being will use them all a lot. With that being said, I don't think we'll buy a midfielder this summer.
That leaves us with the forward line and brings me to Diaz (and Gakpo). The easiest and clearest upgrade we can make to the squad this summer is to buy a younger and more athletic wide forward to take minutes from Gakpo and or Diaz.
From a quick look, here is a list of players with better expected goal contributions than Diaz over the last year.
Anthony Gordon, Miguel Almiron, Leon Bailey, Ross Barkley, Leandro Trossard, Antony (yes..), Garnacho, Mudryk (equal), Dwight McNeil, Bryan Mbeumo, Reiss Nelson, Cunha, Hwang, Neto, Mitoma, Adingra, Marcus Tavernier, Justin Kluivert, Anthony Elanga.
Obviously I'd love to sign someone like Kvaratskhelia, Mitoma (though I have reservations about his age) or Rafael Leao, but as the list above illustrates, we don't need to go into the 100M+ market to upgrade on Diaz. There are guys like Olise, Soule, Raphinha, Zhegrova who are all likely to cost a fair bit less. I'm not going to pretend I've seen Soule or Zhegrova, but the point is our recruitment team will know a lot about them and plenty of others.
I think the biggest difference we can make to the new manager and generally to our prospects over the next few years is upgrading Diaz and/or Gakpo with the aim of having someone who in 2026 can potentially be a top 5-10 wide player in the world.
At risk of getting lynched again I just wanted to reflect on the above post.
Since I wrote the post, Diaz and Gakpo have kind of gone in opposite directions. I highlighted both of them because in all honesty I viewed both as a level or two below Jota, Nunez and Salah.
Over the last 6 weeks, Diaz has had a real uptick in performance. In his last 6 league games he has taken 28 shots, in the 6 league games before that he took 11.
Now people could rightly say that this was always going to happen and I was just being an impatient, knee-jerk prick (it's been known to happen) but given the pattern of his performance over an extended period of time I genuinely didn't see him getting to this level. Don't get me wrong he still frustrates at times - holds onto the ball for too long, sloppy passing in the final third etc. but at least he is back to being an extremely potent outlet - someone who can get you up the pitch and drag defences out of shape. I think in some ways he was bought to be a ball progressing creator but in actual fact he is a forward who wants to cut in and get his shots away - more Son than Grealish.
I still stand by the fact that we should be looking to upgrade on our fifth forward this summer, but that player clearly isn't Diaz. Now given I'm writing this post the day after Gakpo put in a truly miserable sub appearance, I could easily be accused of being knee-jerk towards Gakpo, however I think my concerns with him have been more longstanding than with Diaz. Diaz at least profiles like a Liverpool forward - he can play at tempo, he can burst into open space and go and go until his legs fall off. Gakpo on the other hand always seemed an unusual fit. He doesn't have the attributes to be a great 9, he isn't a good enough passer to be a 10, he isn't mobile/able to get on the ball enough to be an 8 and he doesn't have the pace to be a wide player at the Premier League/Champions League where at a minimum full backs are hyper athletic.
Really I'm just writing this post so that Gakpo now goes on a Diaz-esq run between now and May and by then I'll be in the Jota thread saying we should sell him
P.s. I'd still swap Diaz for Garnacho, sorry!