Barca were close to Liga titles in both last seasons, and as you said Liverpool themselves had lost Suarez, along Gerard who was their top scorer that year and Sterling who was one of their best players.
Liverpool last 6 seasons before 15/16 in EPL: 6th, 2nd, 7th, 8th, 6th & 7th. No qualification of CL group stage in that time period, and not an even QF in EL in prior 5 years.
Last time we finished outside of top 3 was in 2003, last time to finish 7th or worse was in 1942
To compare that situation to Barca, is a joke mate.
Oh, and Xavi came in and made 4 signings including 65M one, Liverpool signed Marko Grujic for Klopp.
No secondary or tertiary arguments, you are simply cherry picking with numbers to favour your arguments, half of the players you mention was deals done after Liverpool was already a top team in 2018.
Players like Jota, Thiago, Konate & Diaz were done after they were CL winner, finalist, EPL winner and 97 points second place, while players like Keita, Alison & Fabinho were done after they already made it to CL final and were already competing with the best.
You can't just talk about transfers 7 years apart and say " hey look, we need 600M to build our squad". Nah mate, it isn't.
Who is " the best" are we talking about?
There is no "best" in La Liga atm, only RM and they are a side that had benefited from mental midgets in oil clubs to boots their season so far, and had no contest in Liga this year.
We have at least to compete with those in Liga, that is a minimal requirement for next year.
No one is asking for immediate CL trophy here, non. Just domestic improvement and ability to cope with teams in Europe without humiliations.
You can't convince me that Barca can't do a better job in losing against sides like Liverpool than a team like Villarreal who at least got respect while going out. You yourself made this argument when Koeman was here.
Barca was out of Frankfurt and Bilbao in cup games, both are inferior teams ffs and the result was actually flattering to the performance we had.
That should be unacceptable next year.
One last thing, investments needs cost reduction, and Xavi is convincing Busquets to stay, MATS biggest fan and supporting Pique through the current shitstorm instead of kicking him out. All are high earners who would open huge margin of investments (check my post on FDJ thread, masa-salary tricks make such savings really valuable).
Current rumours is depressing tbh, but Xavi will earn the chance to get a lot of his wishes within club abilities, will have a summer to improve the team in preseason etc.
But next season there will no excuse for not competing domestically and end the humiliation trends.
And sure, big investments will be needed eventually, rarely any big team can operate at the very top without doing some of those, no one is denying that.
Doesn't deny that even in current club conditions, room for big improvements are there.
