If he had the chance, Jürgen Klopp might like to go back and start his pre-match press conference all over again.
Unlike other occasions in which the Liverpool boss has remained tight-lipped about transfers, he approached the subject of Moisés Caicedo head-on when asked about the midfielder ahead of the opening Premier League game of the season, ironically against Chelsea.
Klopp confirmed a deal had been agreed, although mere moments after he’d left the media room at the AXA Training Centre, things had changed dramatically, and it seemed Caicedo could in fact be heading to Stamford Bridge instead (as per Fabrizio Romano).
Whichever way that saga goes, in agreeing a $140m (£110m/€127m) deal with Brighton (as per The Athletic), Liverpool has signaled a new intent moving forward, and in the process has prompted a U-turn from Klopp.
Seven years ago, when asked about Paul Pogba’s impending move to Manchester United, which had been projected to be worth $127m (£100m/€116m), Klopp responded (via the Evening Standard): “If you bring one player in for £100m and he gets injured, then it all goes through the chimney.
“The day that this is football, I’m not in a job anymore, because the game is about playing together.
“Other clubs can go out and spend more money and collect top players. I want to do it differently. I would even do it differently if I could spend that money.”
Addressing those comments on Friday though, Klopp said: “Everything changed. Do I like it? No. Did I realize I was wrong? Yes, definitely. That’s the way it goes. It’s not great.
“It won’t go the other way around again. Saudi Arabia definitely won’t help with that. I’m not blaming anyone, but it just won’t help with it, another market with a lot of money.
“In the end, we as a club just have to try to make sure that with our resources we get the best possible team together. We all know in football 50 per cent will like it and 50 per cent will say ‘but I would have done this or that’.
“Believe me, we really try everything to bring together the best squad for us. That’s the idea. We are not in dreamland. It’s not that we can just point at players and bring them in. There’s a lot of work to do these kind of things. Sometimes one door closes and another opens up.
“If people want to throw my quotes at me from five or six years ago, absolutely no problem. That day it was what I thought. Now I realize I was wrong. It’s easy to admit that.”
Klopp would no doubt prefer that it wasn’t the case his club had to bid such hefty sums for players, but that is very much the football world we now live in.
And, as the Liverpool boss points out, the rise of Saudi Arabia as a force in the transfer market almost certainly means this will not be the last time the Reds enter nine-figure sums (in £) for players.