With less than a week to go in the transfer window, Liverpool have little room to manoeuvre when it comes to strengthening their squad. And not just because of tightened purse strings in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.As has been the case since 2010, once the transfer window closes on August 31, the Reds will be required to name their 25-man squad for the first half of the season. From that 25, Jurgen Klopp is not allowed to select more than 17 overseas players, while players born on or after January 1, 2000 do not need to be registered. If he is unable to make up his 25-man squad with eight homegrown players, he will be unable to name a full 25-man squad.Liverpool have trod a fine line when it comes to registering their squad in recent seasons, be it not boasting enough homegrown players and boasting too many overseas players. READ MORE: Kylian Mbappe, Jurgen Klopp and the £176.8m truth about Liverpool transfer As a result, Marko Grujic was sent on loan to Porto after the Premier League transfer deadline closed at the start of last season when the Reds found their squad over-stocked. Since signing Ibrahima Konate from RB Leipzig back in May, Liverpool have prioritised moving on their lesser-used squad players to avoid a repeat this summer, with Xherdan Shaqiri s departure to Lyon on Monday leaving them with the maximum number of 17 overseas players. However, Divock Origi and Loris Karius are both among that 17 and could be moved on before the window closes, while the latter could even find himself left out of the Reds squad altogether even if he remains at Anfield.Meanwhile, following Ben Davies and Ben Woodburns loan moves to Sheffield United and Hearts respectively, Liverpool are left with the eight homegrown players they need to be able to name a full 25-man squad.The only problem is, like Davies and Woodburn, a couple of them arent realistically going to be first team players for the season ahead with Nat Phillips and Sheyi Ojo both still in line for summer departures.With the likes of Harvey Elliott, Curtis Jones, Neco Williams and Rhys Williams in reserve as Under-21s players, Liverpool wont be left short and will have faith that one or two of their starlets can complete that homegrown quota in the years ahead.Must-read Liverpool FC newsBut with James Milner out of contract next summer and Jordan Henderson yet to agree new terms, with both the wrong side of 30, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Joe Gomez and Caoimhin Kelleher by no means guaranteed regular football at Anfield, it demonstrates how fragile Liverpools situation could become.Of course, Klopp is not the first Reds manager to have had to navigate such issues, with the need for eight homegrown players in place for European competition two years prior to their introduction to the Premier League. And such a dilemma played a decisive role in Liverpools transfer stance in the summer of 2008 when Rafa Benitez signed Robbie Keane and was willing to sacrifice Xabi Alonso to help finance a move for Gareth Barry. Previously, we had been forced to include a number of players who simply were not ready to play for the first team, just so we met the criteria, the Spaniard admitted in his 2012 autobiography.That year (2008), though, we still had a problem. We had Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard, of course, as well as Jermaine Pennant, our only English first-team players. We could bolster the list with (Martin) Kelly, (Jay) Spearing and Steven Irwin, but we were still two short.Our transfer policy would have to centre on homegrown players of sufficient quality to play in the Champions League. The two targets we identified were Robbie Keane and Gareth Barry. I spoke to our senior players about both and their responses were uniformly positive. Everyone saw them as the sort of signings that would suit us perfectly.Barry appealed to us for a number of reasons (and) his nationality and price made him the ideal signing The problem, of course, as ever, was that we did not have that much money. The interest payments the Americans were giving to the banks as a result of the loans they had taken out to buy the club were eating into our transfer budget, so we had to be clever.It would be much easier if football was a case of just selling the players you no longer needed. It is not. Sometimes, you have to part with a valued asset. We knew we would have to sell players that summer if we were to raise the funds to bring in the reinforcements - and, in particular, the British reinforcements - we needed.That would require parting company with one of our current squad members who would fetch a substantial fee. We decided that the most likely candidate was Xabi Alonso He remained coveted on the continent and we knew that we had to make a sacrifice if we were to build the squad we needed.Of course, this stance did not work out well for Benitez. There was backlash to his decision to offload Alonso, with no interested clubs meeting the asking price as Liverpool failed to raise sufficient funds to sign Barry, while Keane flopped and was sold back to Tottenham at a loss after just half a season.Alonso then had the season of his life before putting in a transfer request to force through a £30m move to Real Madrid the following summer, with replacement Alberto Aquilani proving to be an injury-prone flop as the Reds dropped from second to seventh and Benitez lost his job in 2010.Fortunately for Liverpool and for Klopp, even when staring down the same barrel, they will not decide on the same solution.Sign up for daily Liverpool newsGet all the latest Liverpool breaking news, team news, transfer rumours, injury updates plus analysis of what's next for the Reds.You'll also get the latest transfer talk and analysis every day for FREE! Sign up here - it only takes a few seconds!For the Reds now, under FSG, it is as simple as selling the players they no longer need, With Harry Wilson, Taiwo Awoniyi, Liam Millar and Kamil Grabara departing alongside Shaqiri and Grujic to bring in over £40m so far this summer.Whether Liverpool are able to dip their toes back into the transfer market before the window closes next Tuesday remains to be seen, and will likely still be determined on whether they are able to complete one or two further outgoings first.But even though the Reds find themselves backed into a corner, and will have to be clever to name a full, competitive 25-man squad, Klopp will not be forced to sacrifice one of his senior stars to help raise funds.Even if the purse strings under FSG are tight, Liverpool remain in a much better position than they ever were under their predecessors, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.Read MoreRelated ArticlesRead MoreRelated Articles