It’s been a little over a week since the transfer window closed and the dust is starting to settle. This was one of the most chaotic transfer windows I can remember in the Premier League, where clubs, flush with cash, were let loose to buy players to improve their teams.

The result? Over £1.4bn spent, and very few clubs have actually improved and even fewer will be happy with the squads they now have. Even Manchester United, who out of last season’s top 7 probably had the best transfer window, will feel like they’re still lacking a couple of players.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the ‘transfer window: winners and losers’ articles floating around. There seems to be a consensus that Liverpool had a good transfer window. I think they’ve had an average one at best.

The positive feeling about Liverpool’s transfers seems to revolve around the signing for next season of Naby Keita, which, to be fair, is a rare piece of foresight, where despite Keita being available for less money next season, Liverpool have paid a premium to secure him and stop other teams from getting him.

But that doesn’t help them this season. What Liverpool have managed to do, somewhat similarly to Arsenal, is strengthen areas they were already quite strong in, while at the same time completely ignore their weak positions.

At the halfway point of last season, Liverpool were in a title race. They were 6 points behind Chelsea, which with 19 games left was not an impossible task. The transfer window had just opened, so with a couple of signings, Liverpool could have sustained their unlikely league challenge.

The need for players was clear. Liverpool’s already too-small squad was facing a fixture pile-up having lost a few players to injury, Sadio Mane to the African Cup of Nations and Joel Matip to confusion over his eligibility with Cameroon denying Matip’s claim that he had retired from international football.

Instead, what followed what has to be one of the most stupid plans ever devised. They decided to do nothing until summer, where they could then try to sign players in the hopes they might then get them back to the position they were currently in.

While this inactivity was happening, Liverpool picked up only 3 points out of 15 in January, only won 9 from their last 19 in total and went from challenging for the title to falling over the line to finish 4th.

Towards the back end of last season, a few stories started appearing with all the hallmarks of the club leaking to friendly journalists, that owners FSG understood the need to go and buy quality players and were prepared to spend big to do so. £200m was a reported figure and the hopes fans had was that the prospect of Champions League football would allow Liverpool to sign a better class of player than they otherwise would.

So have they?

Well, no. Mohamed Salah and Andrew Robertson are good additions to the team, with Salah's searing pace already an asset; but neither are players that would have been unattainable without Champions League football.

There seems to be a bit of buzz around the signing of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who reportedly turned down more money at both Arsenal and Chelsea to join Liverpool, but I don’t share it.

Liverpool have paid a lot of money for a player who, not only is the poster child for unfulfilled potential, but was also in the final year of a contract. While Oxlade-Chamberlain (I’m not calling him the Ox) has all the attributes of a good player and a player that fits Jurgen Klopp’s style of play, he hasn’t produced enough on the pitch to justify what Liverpool are paying.

Martin Skrtel has scored more Premier League goals, in the last 6 years, than Oxlaide-Chamberlain and he left @LFC a year ago.

— Robert (@KopData) August 28, 2017

His goal return is dreadful. In the Premier League it’s something like 1 goal per 15 games.For a player who wants to play in a central midfield role, he’ll have to really up his production in order to fit in, especially if he may be replacing Philippe Coutinho in the team.

Coutinho is one of those players who’s been left in limbo following the transfer window. Barcelona wanted him; Liverpool said no, which caused Coutinho to hand in a transfer request and then effectively go on strike.

Despite all the denials, I think Liverpool would have sold had a good offer came in. It seems as though the offers Barca did make were so low that they knew Liverpool wouldn’t entertain them and they were largely done to appease their own fans.

All that talk of talking to FSG directly, making multiple bids that never even reached anything close to what Liverpool would even consider.

— Rafael Hernández (@RafaelH117) September 1, 2017

What happens to Coutinho now is anyone’s guess. He’s back in training after a suspiciously-timed back injury that had kept him out of the first few games of Liverpool’s season cleared up in time for him to play for Brazil. But whether or not he’ll be back in the team anytime soon is less clear.

Liverpool’s glaring weakness over the past umpteen years has been defence. Last season Liverpool’s defence usually contained a central midfielder at left-back and another as a backup centre-back.

It looked as though Liverpool had agreed a deal for Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk early in the summer, only for the deal to be leaked and it ended up with Liverpool having to publicly apologise and completely back away from van Dijk.

Despite that apology having been issued in early June, Liverpool seemingly didn’t move on to another central defender all transfer window; which now means that central defence, a long-standing problem for Liverpool not only hasn’t been improved, it may now actually be worse; as last season there was at least Lucas Leiva to be called on in a pinch; an option which is no longer available.

Despite not getting anyone else, and being probably the best central defender at the club, Mamadou Sakho’s exile from the team for reasons unknown continued and he was eventually sold to Crystal Palace.

Despite Robertson having been signed it seems that Jurgen Klopp’s preferred option at left-back is Alberto ‘how the hell is he still there?’ Moreno, whose one good half of football in a friendly seems to have erased the years of him being terrible.

Last season Liverpool did score a lot of goals, and that was done mostly without having a focal point to the attack. Divock Origi struggled with the responsibility of leading the attack, and has been sent on a season-long loan for the second time in four seasons. For whatever reason, Liverpool haven’t made any real additions to their forward line.

While Klopp has started the season with Roberto Firmino in an advanced role, he’s not really an out-and-out goalscorer. If something happens to Firmino, or if Klopp wants to change it up his options are Daniel Sturridge, an undoubtedly good player, but one whose wet-paper constitution means that Klopp doesn’t really trust him; Danny Ings, a guy who’s had two career-threatening injuries in the last two years, and Dominic Solanke, who is unproven at first-team level.

The transfer window closed with Liverpool having signed three first-team players (depending on your view of Dominic Solanke being first team or not) but having sold 4. Considering that they were about 6-7 players shy last season, it just doesn’t add up.

I can’t see how a squad that couldn’t meet the demands of playing 45 games last season will manage to cope with playing 60 this season.

That squad depth is already being tested as Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne have already gone down with long-term injuries, and the fixtures haven’t started to pile up yet. Add to that the bizarre situation with Liverpool having not offered Emre Can, who has been excellent so far this season, a new contract over a release clause, despite the fact he can leave for nothing at the end of this season.

Speaking as a Liverpool fan, what’s particularly bad is that Liverpool are showing absolutely no signs of having learned from past mistakes.

Communication from the club has been awful. While it’s not acceptable that club CEO Peter Moore (or, anyone) should receive abuse via Twitter, he should have realised that what fans wanted was some communication from the club. Moore’s response, which boiled down to ‘leave me alone, transfers have nothing to do with me’ wasn’t good enough.

Pls allow me to provide a respectful reminder that managing activities such as player transfers is NOT amongst my CEO responsibilities 1/3

— Peter Moore (@PeterMooreLFC) August 3, 2017

Once again, in what’s becoming a hallmark of the FSG era, Liverpool pissed off a club so much that they refused to do business with them; even if it meant selling a player for a lower amount.

There was a sense this summer that instead of seeing the transfer window as an opportunity to improve the starting XI and improve the squad, Liverpool saw it as a huge pain in the arse that they couldn’t wait to be over.

As of next summer, they’ll get their wish as the Premier League transfer window will close before the start of the season; which is only a good idea if every other league follows suit.

They won’t, so what will happen is Premier League teams will spend two months frantically buying players then a month bricking themselves that no teams from Spain, Italy, Germany, France or anywhere else come for any of their stars.