Has Liverpool Signed Too Many Players In One Transfer Window?

LONDON, ENGLAND – AUGUST 10: Florian Wirtz talks with his teammate Hugo Ekitike of Liverpool on the pitch during the 2025 FA Community Shield match between Crystal Palace and Liverpool at Wembley Stadium on August 10, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Liverpool FC via Getty Images

Liverpool FC has gone from signing just one backup player in the summer transfer window of 2024 to signing half an outfield’s worth of potential starters in 2025.

It has been a remarkable summer for the club in the transfer market, resulting in a spend of $560 million on new players. This has included breaking the Premier League transfer record twice, first on Florian Wirtz earlier in the window, and then for Alexander Isak just before it closed.

The $170 million spent in Isak on September 1 took Liverpool’s spending well over the $500 million mark.

Away from the purely financial side of things, it means Liverpool now has five new players who would expect to be starting games regularly, with Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, and Hugo Ekitike joining Wirtz and Isak among the new recruits.

It was almost six, as the club pursued the transfer of Crystal Palace and England international defender Marc Guehi until the final hours of the transfer window. The only reason the deal was not done was Palace’s inability to secure the signing of a suitable replacement.

It is clear that Liverpool was not worried about adding many new players in such a short space of time, but should they have been?

The team has started the 2025/26 season in a less than free-flowing fashion and has struggled to put up the attacking numbers that might be expected of a defending champion. Despite this, it has still found a way to score and win, but could the lack of cohesion due to adding so many new starters catch up with them?

In his book, How to Win the Premier League, Liverpool’s former director of research, Ian Graham, points out that Jürgen Klopp integrated three starters per season at the club over four seasons from 2015/16 to 2018/19.

“Three per year for three years straight is really high,” Graham told me in an interview last week.

“That’s nine starters over three years, whereas if you do three starters in one year, and then fewer changes the next year, that’s more typical.

“Doing three starters in a year is ambitious, but you do see it happen. It was that we did three starters a year for three years that was the special part about Liverpool.”

In the book, Graham notes that: “In our 2018/19 season, 83% of our Premier League starts were made by players who were not playing for Liverpool in May 2015,” and that “only Everton integrated more starters than us between May 2015 and May 2019.”

Though Everton’s most recent rebuild appears to be bringing positive results, it is safe to say that its rebuild during that time was not as successful as Liverpool’s. It hints at something Graham told me as we discussed whether it is possible to sign too many players in one go.

Graham says there is a weak correlation when looking at how many starts in a team during a season are coming from new players, and then whether the team is getting more or fewer points on the back of this.

“If you go from the typical amount of churn to a high amount of churn, that loses you about two points, and if you go from an average amount of churn to a low amount of churn, that gains you about two points, but the correlation is really weak.

“When I say it costs you two points, the error bars on that are anything from like a 20-point loss to an 18-point gain.

“If you plot the data, it’s like a random cloud. It’s just got a very, very slow sloping downwards trend, but it’s mostly noise with this little bit of trend.”

Liverpool won the league last season with no churn and no changes to the first XI. It did replace Klopp as manager, but the fine-tuning from new head coach Arne Slot turned Klopp’s already well-drilled and impressive outfit into Premier League champions.

When they won the league under Klopp in 2019/20, there was also very little first-team upheaval. “Liverpool not making any changes the two times they won the title means they’d be the poster boys for not changing,” says Graham.

Can Slot’s side also become the poster boys at the other end of the churn spectrum? If it turns out to be the case, they will do so following a fairly slow and unconvincing start.

Sometimes, though, just having good players can win you games in individual moments.

Liverpool’s wins have come via such moments so far this season. The most notable was a world-class free-kick from Dominik Szoboszlai to defeat title-challengers Arsenal.

New signing Hugo Ekitike has scored twice, and there has also been one from that backup player they signed in 2024, Federico Chiesa, against Bournemouth in the season opener. The most recent narrow win came from a Mohamed Salah penalty late on against Burnley.

Graham refers to basketball analyst Dean Oliver and his most recent book, Basketball Beyond the Paper.

“He said there are four factors to win: talent at your disposal, playing hard, playing together, and then tactics,” Graham says

“I think it was an NBA coach who told him this, but the same applies to football.

“Talent at your disposal is by far the most important one, playing hard and playing together—the manager has a big impact on those things and they are equally important—and then tactics is the last one.

“So if you’ve got good players who play hard and play together, that’ll get you 80% or 90% of the way there.”

Even though Liverpool are yet to click tactically this season, they have signed some very good players, and appear to have retained the high work ethic and togetherness that existed under Klopp. These being top-class players working under top-class coaches, the tactical side should eventually sort itself out.

Liverpool has started the season with four matches that have each been tough in their own way. An opener against a well-organised Bournemouth side, which is the flagship team of the Premier League’s new middle-class, was followed up with a game against Newcastle, fired up on the back of the Isak saga. Potential title-challengers Arsenal were next, and then there was a game against another well-organised defensive team in Burnley, whose block was tough to break down.

While this run of games has been difficult, there are, as is often said, no easy games in the Premier League.

Liverpool’s new signings are not likely to get an easy ride or be able to ease into their new environment anytime soon. The money spent means the club might expect them to slot in more or less immediately, but a player’s transfer fee is not in itself an indication of their ability to adapt.

“The gross spend has surprised me, and I’m jealous that they never did that sort of spending when I was there!” sums up Graham.

“They’re doing two transfer windows at once. That rebuild process that Jürgen signed up for, then, for various reasons, didn’t finish.

“That process is like a year or two behind where it was planned to be, but I’d be surprised if you saw that amount of spend or that amount of squad turnover next season.

“If you bear in mind those two renewals of Mo and Virgil [van Dijk], if they hadn’t happened, it would have been squad churn like you’d never seen before at the top of the Premier League.

“It’s not something that I think will continue, but I think it was needed.”

Liverpool’s full squad depth will now be tested as the club begins its latest Champions League campaign this week, which usually signals the start of the two games per week schedule when players begin to be rotated.

Though they’re yet to fully click together, these five new signings will be more than useful as the club looks to challenge on all fronts once again.