Coming around to the idea of signing Mane.
I think once you get past the eye watering reported fee (which people tend to forget about pretty quickly as long as the player performs) and the whole "not another Southampton player" thing (if he played for Hoffenheim or Valencia we would probably be a little more excited about this signing, and to be fair I personally think Clyne, Lovren and Lallana have turned out pretty well for us), unlike some of our other recent big money signings he's a player that quite clearly suits the style of football Klopp wants us playing to a tee so while he might not have been my first choice I can definitely see the merit in signing him.
With his line breaking speed, strength and quick feet he brings a different skill set which our front 4 is currently lacking, and importantly he's also a proven goalscorer. Looking at his last 4 seasons:
2012/13 (RB Salzburg): 19 goals 10 assists
2013/14 (RB Salzburg): 23 goals 18 assists
2014/15 (RB Salzburg/Southampton): 13 goals 9 assists
2015/16 (Southampton): 15 goals 9 assists
The one knock I would have on him would be that his goals tend to come in bursts, i.e. he'll score 8 goals in 8 games and then 3 in the next 15-20. It's a concern when you're spending that sort of money so you'd hope that Klopp could help him in that regard and perhaps bring a bit more consistency to his game.
Could we get better value searching for 'rough diamonds' elsewhere in Europe? Possibly, and to be fair we've taken exactly that approach with Karius, Matip, Grujic and Zielinski expected to come in for around £20m combined, and with an attempted bid for a very similar player in terms of style and quality to Mane in Ousmane Dembele (who unfortunately opted to join Dortmund instead). The latter is important as to me it shows that Klopp obviously feels that this type of player is essential to the team he wants to build, and that this isn't a panic buy or a signing on a whim but rather a strategic move to bring in a player with a specific skill set to improve the team. He's mentioned in interviews in the past that he sees a need in the squad for wingers with speed and skill so I'm sure he and the rest of the committee will have been thinking about this for some time.
Will Mane be a good signing for us? Who knows, he hasn't even put pen to paper yet let alone kicked a ball in a Liverpool shirt. In his favour I think Klopp knows what he's doing when it comes to picking out and developing talents, and I think Mane is the right type of player which is a good start given the amount of money we've wasted on players who quite clearly weren't suited to our style of play in the past. The critical thing will be whether or not Klopp can extract greater consistency from him and extrapolate those 7-8 week form spikes into a season of quality performances because he ticks a lot of other boxes.