Liverpool Cup Exit Highlights Depth Problems Despite Summer Spending

Liverpool manager Arne Slot in the dugout ahead of the Carabao Cup fourth round match at Anfield, Liverpool. Picture date: Wednesday October 29, 2025. (Photo by Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

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Liverpool was knocked out of England’s League Cup competition on Wednesday night at the hands of fellow Premier League side Crystal Palace.

Arne Slot fielded a much-changed lineup that might have highlighted a lack of depth in his team as it lost 3-0 on home turf at Anfield.

Much of the focus on Liverpool this summer was on how much it spent on new players. Close to $600 million was handed over by the club in transfer fees, but beneath the eyecatching sums of money, the make-up of the roster had been somewhat ignored. That was until Palace dispatched Liverpool’s second-string with ease, inflicting the home side’s sixth defeat in seven games.

For all the money spent, Liverpool still sold more players than it bought in the 2025 summer transfer window.

Eight players departed for transfer fees, including Darwin Núñez, Luís Diaz, Jarell Quansah, Caoimhín Kelleher, and Trent Alexander-Arnold, while four left on loan, including Harvey Elliott and Kostas Tsimikas.

Six players were bought in the summer—Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, and Giovanni Leoni, while Giorgi Mamardashvili arrived after a loan at Valencia, having been bought last summer.

In total, there were 12 departures to eight arrivals, including Mamardashvili, and though the squad status of these players varies, Liverpool looks one or two first-team players short.

At one point during the summer, there were suggestions that the club was signing more than it needed by looking to Alexander Isak despite already having secured the $94 million transfer of Hugo Ekitike.

The truth was that the arrival of another center-forward was desperately needed. The club had already sold Díaz to Bayern Munich and Núñez to Al-Hilal, both of whom had featured in the striker role for the club in 2025. There is also the tragic death of Portuguese forward Diogo Jota to take into account, and the effect it has naturally had on those who worked with him and supported him at Liverpool.

Liverpool loaned out Elliott, who had regularly acted as the backup or alternative to Mohamed Salah, and made 28 appearances in all competitions last season, often making useful or telling contributions when called upon. Tsimikas was also a useful backup option at left-back, but given the form of the current player in that position, Kerkez and Andy Robertson, he might have been first choice by now had he stayed at the club.

The Isak signing alone was not enough to bolster the depleted forward line. Liverpool created a problem for themselves by spending so much on one player in a protracted transfer saga, when it might have been better to spread those funds across two positions before the season started.

This would also have given a clearer hierarchy in the center-forward position. As it is, Slot was facing the difficult decision of leaving out the record signing Isak, for the more in-form player Ekitike, prior to Isak’s recent injury.

Last season, not including youth or reserve players, Liverpool had Díaz, Núñez, Jota, Elliott, Salah, Cody Gakpo, and Federico Chiesa as options across the forward line. That’s seven players across the three positions with, theoretically, two in each and one spare.

This season, the club has Gakpo, Salah, Chiesa, Ekitike, and Isak as its options in these areas, down from seven to five.

Wirtz could be considered as an option from the wing, but his position is more of a central attacking midfielder or No. 10, and it seems he was promised such a role on signing for the club.

Rio Ngumoha has proven a useful option at times, but the 18-year-old’s role should be more that of the spare player as Chiesa was last season, rather than someone who should bear the burden of being relied upon as a backup option.

Liverpool might also have been better maintaining the same shape as last season rather than adding a system change to the rest of the disruption. Wirtz could have dropped into Szoboszlai’s hybrid role from 2024/25, which was somewhere between that of a central and attacking midfielder, but with Wirtz on the left rather than the right, which would be closer to his role at Bayer Leverkusen.

Szoboszlai himself could then drop into one of the deeper midfield roles, but maintain his presence on the right side of the field with Wirtz more attacking to the left.

It was something Liverpool was close to doing in the Community Shield, but since then, Wirtz has been more of a genuine central No. 10 in a 4-2-3-1, and the roles and formation have not settled.

There is also the issue of too many new signings upsetting the natural balance, personality, and character of the squad, both in the locker room and on the field.

Liverpool undoubtedly needed to strengthen, but brought upon itself the issue of needing to ass so many players in one go.

It could have made this a more gradual process by adding one or two more players in the 2024/25 season, when Chiesa was the only signing, or by making fewer sales this year. Instead, it tried to do everything in one go, and even then, it was not enough.

There have been some moments of misfortune amid all of this. New center-back Leoni was one of the best players on the field in the previous EFL Cup game, against Southampton, looking classy and assured, but he picked up a season-ending ACL injury later on in the same game.

There have also been recent injuries to Ryan Gravenberch and Jeremie Frimpong, as well as Isak, which disrupts the settling-in process for this new-look team. Like the EFL Cup lineup, the injuries also highlight the lack of depth.

On top of this, the team has found itself on the wrong side of some of the fine margins in games, but previous versions of Liverpool that won the title under Jürgen Klopp in 2019/20 and Slot last year would have made the margins bigger in its favor so as to avoid leaving too much to the soccer gods.

Liverpool was widely considered to have won the 2025 transfer window, but winning the race for players’ signatures has never automatically resulted in winning games, for any club.

A club that had always been about savvy operation on the transfer market went on an uncharacteristic spending spree with a flurry of new signings. So far, it has not paid off, and recent evidence suggests that, regardless of the money spent, the squad build itself was not quite right.