Liverpool will be glad to see the back of the summer transfer window, even though they have completed one of the most incredible spending sprees in the history of the Premier League.
The Alexander Isak saga has taken its toll on all involved, but Anfield sporting director Richard Hughes won the tug-of-war in the end, bringing the striker to Liverpool from Newcastle United in a record-breaking £125m deal.
It capped a transfer window of incredible expenditure. Liverpool had already broken the transfer record earlier in the summer through the addition of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen for £116m, signing a range of further quality players.
Most expensive signings in Premier League history after Isak (timeless)
And though a deal for Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guehi fell through, Slot will feel that his side have enough about them to defend their Premier League title and push for more silverware.
After all, with such staggering firepower, it would take a Herculean effort indeed to knock the Reds from their perch.
Meet Liverpool's new strikers
Some consider Liverpool's record-breaking signing of Isak to be superfluous. The Anfield side welcomed Hugo Ekitike to the fold for £79m in July, after all.
Ekitike-Liverpool-Bournemouth-Premier-League
It was important that Liverpool landed new goalscorers this summer, having months ago decided to cash in on Darwin Nunez, who was plagued by inconsistency across his three years at the club and actually regressed when Slot replaced Klopp last year.
In Ekitike, Liverpool have a top talent who has bagged three goals from his opening four matches under Slot's wing. Isak needs no introduction. The former Newcastle talisman scored 27 goals last season and is widely regarded to be among the most dangerous strikers in Europe.
And he now plays in Red. Mohamed Salah practically dragged Liverpool to the title last season, so staggering was his prolific contribution, but now there is a more even spread of top-level ability across the frontline, and Isak has what it takes to become the new talisman.
However, there's one man who often gets overlooked in such conversations, but is actually demonstrating qualities that could see him emerge as Liverpool's new version of Salah as the Egyptian enters the twilight of his career on Merseyside.
Liverpool's new Mohamed Salah
Salah's journey since joining from Roma for £34m in 2017 has been something of a lightning-in-a-bottle success story. He broke the record for goals scored in a 38-game Premier League season in his first term under Jurgen Klopp's management, and then went on to win the Premier League and the Champions League.
Salah-Liverpool
Liverpool's all-time top scorer in the Premier League, Salah scored 34 goals and supplied 23 assists across all competitions last season, and though he's posted a goal and an assist from his opening three league fixtures of the term, he would be forgiven for easing his output with the likes of Isak and Ekitike now in the mix.
However, might we as a fanbase be too quick to forget about Cody Gakpo? The versatile Dutchman joined from PSV Eindhoven for an initial £35m after his success at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and he has made incremental progress since, scoring 42 goals and providing 19 assists across 132 matches.
Klopp recognised Gakpo's dynamism as a thing to utilise across a range of berths, but Slot has fine-tuned his countryman's role, restricting him to more of a left-sided deployment.
Cody Gakpo for Liverpool
Cody Gakpo for Liverpool
This bore dividends last season, with Gakpo instrumental in winning the Premier League, posting 18 goals and seven assists across all competitions.
The £120k-per-week forward might not ever reach the same prolific heights as a peerless superstar like Salah, but he's been praised in the past for his "special skill set" by Klopp's former assistant manager Pep Lijnders, so lethal in the final third yet deceptively athletic and creative too.
All-time PL Top Scorers
Player
Alan Shearer
Harry Kane
Wayne Rooney
Mohamed Salah
Andy Cole
Stats via Premier League
Salah, of course, is one of the finest goalscorers in Premier League history, and the definitive poster boy of the club's success over the past ten years. Gakpo may not achieve such heights, but he's showing himself to have the capacity to emulate the superstar in regard to distribution of output.
And having already set up two goals in the Premier League this term, might the 26-year-old be heading toward a more balanced take on the offensive game, something Salah has performed with aplomb over his many years at Liverpool?
Of course, striking on goal and making the net bulge has long been Gakpo's bread and butter.
In fact, data-driven platform FBref have crunched the numbers and revealed that Gakpo ranked among the top 5% of attacking midfielders and wingers in the Premier League last season for goals scored per 90, underscoring his natural-born sharpness in the box.
That marks another reason why the goalscoring wideman could prove to be the perfect Salah replacement, for if he maintains his current rate, then he will achieve a prolonged run of prolific form in the English top flight, having rarely been fielded as a centre-forward.
Gakpo's performances for Liverpool in the Champions League last season actually led FBref to list him as one of Salah's most statistically similar players.
Liverpool's Cody Gakpo wins the Premier League
Liverpool's Cody Gakpo wins the Premier League
As the Slot machine went from strength to strength across the course of the 2024/25 campaign, so too did Gakpo cement himself as one of Liverpool's most important players.
Pundit Peter Crouch remarked that the Netherlands star had "gone up a level" under his compatriot's tactical guidance, and his start to the new season gives the impression that Gakpo's finest form is still ahead of him, and that when the fateful day of Salah's departure from Liverpool comes, Slot will find the perfect in-house replacement already playing on the opposite flank.