Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version or go back to LFC Live.net

And the former midfielder says no-one at Anfield will be uneasy about the raft of new arrivals this summer.

Wirtz became the most expensive Liverpool signing of all time when the Premier League champions agreed to pay Bayer Leverkusen an initial £100m with a further £16m in success-based add-ons last month and the Bundesliga player of the season arrives amid huge excitement among the Reds' fanbase.

The 22-year-old followed on from the £29m addition of his Leverkusen team-mate Jeremie Frimpong before a £40m capture of Milos Kerkez was confirmed from Bournemouth later that month.



READ MORE:Liverpool midfielder makes 'surprise' admission ahead of transfer decisionREAD MORE:Liverpool transfer intrigue grows over missing forward as new multi-year deal announced

Liverpool are now on the cusp of committing a further £79m for Eintracht Frankfurt's Hugo Ekitike and inclusive of the £29m deal for Giorgi Mamardashvili last summer from Valencia, Liverpool have now spent close to £300m in what has been a history-making summer transfer window already, with over a month still to go.

Lucas, who served Liverpool for 10 years prior to his 2017 departure, thinks the makeup of the squad means Wirtz will find it easier to play the sort of football that emboldened the club fend off interest from Manchester City and Bayern Munich to land him in a blockbuster deal in June.

"I have seen him a bit, not much, but I think he is a midfielder who can score goals, can assist and link-up with the strikers - we don't know the system that Arne [Slot] will probably play - but I think he will add something different to the players we have in midfield," Lucas told the ECHO in Hong Kong.

Article continues below

"Of course, the price tag, it always comes with big expectations but I think he has shown that he is capable of doing that and he won the league, the cup and he has good experience as a national team player so I think he is arriving in a team that is very well organised, which will just give him the freedom to express himself.

"I think, you know, new signings are always welcome when they come to add something more to this squad.

Because it is what players expect from the new players: to add something more that they maybe don't have - or they have to replace someone that had to leave or moved on.

"No, I think in a team like Liverpool, competition is always there.

So in the same way, of course fans get excited when you have a lot of players coming in and spending a lot of money but let's not forget that players who are already here now or was here last year, we didn't have as many signings and we still won the league.

"So it's important that these new players will feel the culture of the team that will help them to succeed but the players who are here already, they have a strong base to keep going forward.

Many years ago, we had so many injury problems and I remember a season where we ended up with almost no defenders (2020/21) and so I think the club realised that it needs to have depth because if you have injuries, you can replace players of the same level and I think it is that.

I can imagine that is what the club is thinking.

"It is really important [for the seniors players to maintain club culture] and I think we have so many leaders in that team now.

So it is really important to help these players, the new signings, to understand the role they are playing.

"And also to understand the culture of work, of a team and we can see that Liverpool, no-one who is more important than the team and it is really hard, it seems easy, but it is really hard to create that culture and that is why Liverpool have been so successful."

Article continues below

Liverpool return to action when they meet AC Milan at the Kai Tak Stadium in Hong Kong on Saturday before jetting out to Japan for the second leg of their Asian tour.


For more news relating to Manchester City, visit our sister site City Latest Live.