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How do you improve on near perfection?

Of all the questions, of all the conundrums with which Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has had to grapple since sweeping into the club almost four years ago, the most pressing is also the most perplexing.

Having been crowned European champions and claimed a club-record Premier League points total, last season hit heights that even the most successful previous Reds teams will have struggled to match.

There is, of course, always room for growth, the absolute pinnacle forever in sight but never quite reached.

And that's why certain Liverpool supporters, while revelling in the Champions League glory of Madrid, have started to grow restless.

Transfers, or rather the lack of them, have replaced that sixth European Cup as the chief talking point, concerns the Reds are being left behind as their rivals splash the cash in pursuit of closing the gap, whether that be home or abroad.

Follow all the latest Liverpool transfer news and rumours HERE

Klopp has been consistent in his belief Liverpool wouldn't come close to replicating last summer's spend of more than £170million.

And speaking exclusively to the ECHO during the club's ongoing US tour, the Reds manager has addressed how the triumph of last season has made strengthening the squad a difficult task.

“It's not easy,” says Klopp. “I said last year that to improve the team is not easy with reasonable money. With crazy money, you always can do it – okay, you pay whatever you want, then it's possible.

“We are not a club like that. We cannot do that. We are really wealthy but we cannot do what some other teams are doing. That's how it is.

“But we don't have to. We have to find solutions during the season. Yes, you find sometimes the solution in the transfer market and we have done that. I don't have to name the players, everybody knows.

“But otherwise you have to find the solutions on the training ground and that's what we do now.”

Liverpool 'still looking' for transfers

Nicolas Pepe of Lille and Nabil Fekir, now of Real Betis, are two of several players strongly linked in recent months but with whom Liverpool have no interest.

Their only business so far has been the £1.3million spent to take 17-year-old Dutch defender Sepp van den Berg from PEC Zwolle.

Klopp is looking to introduce at least one more new face, with versatile defensive cover on the flanks a priority having been interested in England under-21 right-back Lloyd Kelly before the Bristol City man's move to Bournemouth.

But even if the purse strings remain closed, the Reds boss is convinced he already has the squad to launch another attempt at the Premier League and Champion League.

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“We are still looking, but it will not be the (biggest) transfer window of LFC,” says Klopp. “It just will be a transfer window.

“We will see what we do, and if we haven't done anything by the end it will be for different reasons.

"It's about using this team. In the transfer window, you have to build a team that you think you want to go into the season with. But I have that team already.

“If we can bring somebody else in that makes it even better, we will see. But if not, this team is already there. And again we will have to find solutions at different moments.”

Klopp elaborates on that point. “We started last season with five centre-backs, Nat Phillips included," he adds. "Then there was one matchday against Brighton when there was Virgil van Dijk left. Fabinho next to him.

“Had one of them gone out, then I wouldn't have known who could do it. Who could play centre-back?

“You cannot be prepared for everything. You need a bit of luck, and we had a little bit of it in the final part of last season. We came through, won something, and now let's try again.”

Long term transfer strategy

Klopp also shed light on Liverpool's transfer policy. Rather than stockpile players in every position to ensure quality cover, the Reds boss prefers a space in which talent is allowed to breathe and develop.

If a player is good enough, they'll have a chance to prove it, with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez ultimate examples.

It may not, as Klopp readily admits, be what some people want to hear, but it's an approach the shimmering silverware lifted at the Wanda Metropolitano suggests more than works.

“Transfer strategy has to be long term,” he says. “It has to be long term.

“Short term covers the problem, but doesn't solve it. If someone gets an injury, and you buy someone to fill the position and three weeks later the injured player is back, then you have double quality in the same position.

“Having too much quality doesn't help with the development of players. It's good for everybody on the outside, because they can say 'well if he can't play, then he can play or he could play'.

“If you're working together all week and then three of the players (of the same quality in the same position) can't play, they won't get any better. It's not just about them staying confident in that kind of situation.

“You have to create a situation where you NEED the player, you need the boys. That's what we try. We have 100% always long-term plans. That's what is really good about this football club.”

'New players' can make an impact

A contributory factor to Klopp's reluctance to move in the market this summer is his belief in the players now available after lengthy absences during last season, even if his “new players” comment earlier this month irked those Liverpool supporters who regard themselves transfer-starved.

Chief among those returnees is Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who continues to build fitness after being sidelined for a year with a serious knee injury

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(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

The midfielder impressed during an hour-long outing against Borussia Dortmund on Friday and featured for the first half against Sevilla two days later.

Liverpool won't rush Oxlade-Chamberlain. What, then, is possible for the England man this season?

“It's up to Alex,” says Klopp. “Life can sometimes be about luck, and has had a really unlucky time with the injury.

“Two seasons ago, when he got injured, he was in the shape of his life, looking so positive.

“I'm so happy with how it looks at the moment, but of course we are going to have to see.

“But Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain... come on. Fit... if that's not a new signing, then I don't know. To buy him, after the impression we got when he played for us, what do we think the price would be to buy that level of player?!?

“Rhian Brewster, Joe Gomez, Adam Lallana, it's all clear. We have these players, now we have to use them.

“If they are playing, then good. If not, then they have to push the others. That's how it should be. That's how good squads work, and that's what we believe in.”