At the start of the last Premier League season, Liverpool fans had some fun online passing around a picture labeled “Liverpool F.C. as a car.” The image showed one vehicle Frankensteined together from the parts of three: The front was a sports car, the center a boring family sedan and the back a rusted junker missing its wheels. And for the first half of last season, the image seemed to be a perfect metaphor for their team.

Liverpool’s attack, headlined by the transcendent Mohamed Salah and the almost-as-good Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino, blitzed through the league terrifying opposing defenses. The midfield, typified by the stereotypically English grit of Jordan Henderson and James Milner, did its job capably if unspectacularly.

But the defense? In many matches the back four appeared leaderless or, worse, confused. Whichever goalkeeper played was invariably shaky.

Over the past year, though, Liverpool has given itself a significant — and expensive — overhaul. In January, the club paid a record transfer fee for a defender in prying centerback Virgil van Dijk away from Southampton, and he backstopped the team en route to last season’s Champions League final. Liverpool paid another record price this summer, this time to add Roma’s Brazilian goalkeeper, Alisson Becker, and completed deals worth tens of millions more to bring Naby Keita (from Germany’s RB Leipzig) and Fabinho (most recently at Monaco) into a suddenly crowded midfield.