Liverpool’s Record Spend and the Isak Question

The summer of 2025 was supposed to be Liverpool’s grand reset. Premier League champions, cash in the bank, a squad still glowing from a title run – and then came the chequebook.

Florian Wirtz for £116m. Hugo Ekitike for £69m. Alexander Isak smashing the British transfer record as he walked out of St James’ Park and into Anfield. It was a statement window, a declaration that Liverpool intended not just to stay at the top, but to stretch away.

It hasn’t played out that cleanly.

Wirtz, the German playmaker billed as the new creative heartbeat, never quite imposed himself in the way that fee demanded. Ekitike’s campaign was ripped apart by an Achilles injury in April. Isak’s story has been even more jagged: no pre-season, a broken leg, and just four goals in all competitions across a stop-start first year.

For a £100m-plus centre-forward at a club like Liverpool, those numbers don’t just invite scrutiny. They roar for it.

The spotlight only intensified when 2026-27 kicked off. At 26, Isak found himself facing familiar questions: about his body, his rhythm, and whether he could be the ruthless focal point a title-chasing side needs. This time, though, there has been a flicker of the player Liverpool thought they were buying.

Three goals in his last two Premier League games have changed the mood. The movement looks sharper, the confidence less fragile. For now, Arne Slot’s successor Andoni Iraola doesn’t have to wrestle with the question of who leads the line. Isak has the shirt and, crucially, he has goals again.

That calm, though, is temporary. Ekitike is expected back around the turn of the year. When he returns, the dynamic shifts.

Has Isak been lucky that he hasn’t had fierce competition breathing down his neck while he searched for form? Former Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant doesn’t buy that.

Speaking to GOAL in association with NetBet Casino, Pennant argued they would have found a way to unleash both forwards.

“I wouldn't say fortunate because I think they would have found a way maybe to play them both,” he said. “The timing of Ekitike's injury, [Cody] Gakpo wasn't performing well. We know that Ekitike likes to drift out to the left, so it wouldn't have surprised me if at some point Isak would have started down the middle, Ekitike may have gone on to the left-hand side and come in on his right foot like Gakpo does and sometimes join up as two number nines.

“But they are two good players, great players and you can't have a player like that sitting on your bench. They would have made a way, I think, for them both to play at some point.”

That vision – Isak through the middle, Ekitike peeling off the left, Liverpool morphing into a shape with two number nines – tells you everything about the expectation around this squad. These are not luxury signings. They are supposed to be the spine of a new era.

The pressure isn’t just external. Inside the club, reputations are tied to these deals.

Robbie Fowler, still “God” to the red half of Merseyside, admitted before this season that he was uneasy about Isak’s fitness and whether he could finally meet the weight of that record fee. Speaking to GOAL, Fowler framed this campaign as a decisive one not only for the striker, but for the man on the touchline as well.

He said of the Swede needing to deliver now if Liverpool are to park thoughts of another big-money centre-forward: “Absolutely. And that's the case with the managers as well. The manager [Arne Slot] obviously didn’t deliver in the second year, so people questioned that. And as we all know, if people start questioning things, then there’s only one way you go.”

At Liverpool, there is no long runway for doubt. Once questions start, they rarely fade.

Isak has at least started to answer some of them domestically. He found the net against Nottingham Forest. He scored again versus Ipswich. Those are the building-block fixtures where a striker can quietly rebuild his season.

Europe, though, told a different story. Liverpool’s opening Champions League outing of 2026-27, a tense 2-1 comeback win over Atletico Madrid at Anfield, passed without an Isak goal. The team found a way, the stadium roared, the points were banked – but for a forward of his stature, those are the nights that define legacies.

And Liverpool’s attack is only getting more crowded.

The club have gone big again, this time on Bradley Barcola. £123m on the France international winger, another electric, high-ceiling talent dropped into an already expensive forward line. His arrival adds pace, width and unpredictability. It also adds a very real selection headache for Iraola.

At some point, everyone will be fit: Wirtz searching for rhythm, Ekitike drifting in from the left, Barcola demanding minutes, Gakpo fighting to stay relevant, Isak trying to prove he is more than a record fee and a handful of streaky runs of form.

Liverpool wanted depth. They wanted options. Now they have them, at an eye-watering cost.

The question is no longer whether they can find a way to fit all these attacking pieces together. It’s whether Isak can make himself so important that Liverpool don’t even dare to try without him.