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Another summer, another rebuilding job for Liverpool Football Club.

As someone – Yogi Berra, if you’re interested - once said, “it’s like deja vu all over again.”

The position of Brendan Rodgers as manager, we are told, is not under immediate threat, despite the club planning a thorough review into a miserable campaign.

Changes, though, are inevitable. Changes in outlook, changes in process, changes in personnel. How drastic they are remains to be seen.

On the playing side, as ever, it promises to be a busy few months, with ins and outs aplenty. Melwood is getting a perimeter screen this summer, but it may need a revolving door as well.

The ins are what Reds fans are really interested in, but in the meantime the outs will shine an unflattering light on one of the club’s biggest issues; their recruitment policy.

As Liverpool target new faces – with the likes of Danny Ings, James Milner and Christian Benteke all on their radar – behind the scenes the club are working overtime to ensure their unwanted are moved on.

It won’t be easy. The reputations of Liverpool players have taken a hit over the last 12 months, and there are a lot of players in the current squad on big wages with little by way of recent form to back them up.

And just because you want someone to leave doesn’t necessarily mean they will. Ask Fabio Borini.

Of course there are those who are definitely leaving. Steven Gerrard, obviously, but also Brad Jones and Glen Johnson, who are both out of contract.

Liverpool will be lucky to recoup half of what they spent on some players

Others, meanwhile, will be hawked around Europe. And in most cases, Liverpool are preparing to take significant financial hits as a result.

The likes of Borini, Mario Balotelli, Rickie Lambert, Iago Aspas, Luis Alberto, Sebastian Coates and Jose Enrique may all move on. Combined, they cost more than £50m in transfer fees; they will be lucky to recoup half of that this summer.

What a damning indictment of the club’s dealings in recent seasons. It’s not a new issue – bad signings have been a feature of Liverpool since the late 1980s – but it is one that Fenway Sports Group simply have to sort. Rodgers is under the spotlight, but so is the rest of the Reds’ transfer committee.

Research carried out by experts, including the prominent LFC writer Paul Tomkins, shows that, generally, only 40% of transfers are eventually deemed ‘successful’, but Liverpool have for too long operated some way below even that average. Their record under FSG can be most generously described as “underwhelming” especially given the emphasis placed on ‘resale value’ when identifying potential signings.

They managed, bafflingly, to turn a profit out of Oussama Assaidi in January, but Aspas will leave for much less than the £7.7m Liverpool paid two summers back, while they’ll do well to get anything like the £6m they spent on Alberto.

Borini would have gone for much more last summer than he will this. Lambert, Coates and Enrique, meanwhile, will attract relatively modest fees. Tiago Ilori, who cost £7m in 2013 but is yet to make a competitive appearance, is another facing an uncertain summer after spending this season on loan at Bordeaux.

How quickly do you decide to cut your losses?

Their desperation to offload Balotelli, meanwhile, means they would be willing to let the £16m man leave on loan, if necessary.

Some would argue that these are the risks which accompany a strategy based on signing younger, mid-range players, often from abroad, to then develop; some of them will simply not develop as you hoped, some of them will not settle, some will find the pressures of playing at a big club too much. The issue then is how quickly you decide to cut your losses.

Liverpool will, for different reasons, do so with both Balotelli and Lambert, but the rest of last summer’s permanent signings are all set to remain.

Emre Can, Lazar Markovic and Alberto Moreno are all viewed, for now, as players with enough potential to persist with and will be joined by another in Divock Origi, while the £45m outlay on Dejan Lovren and Adam Lallana makes it highly unlikely that either will be shipped out at this stage.

In the meantime, FSG face a huge challenge. They have to find a way to either make their policy work, or change it to one which does.

Easier said than done, granted, but if Liverpool want to get to where they think they should be, they simply have to buy better.

They can’t afford to spend every summer like this one; cleaning up their own mistakes.

READ: Steven Gerrard's farewell letter to Liverpool fans