PAUL JOYCE
Liverpool set for big summer — how and where will they strengthen?
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Despite being on verge of the title, Arne Slot is keen to refresh his side to take them to next level, with a long shopping list to help challenge on all fronts again
Left back Kerkez, left, and forward Isak are two of the players that have been linked to Slot’s side this summer
Paul Joyce
Friday April 18 2025, 3.20pm, The Times
In recent weeks Arne Slot has taken to reeling off a list of complaints. Liverpool are not good enough to take their eye off the prize, he said, they can struggle for periods in matches and do not score enough goals to ease the pressure on themselves.
By the time he had finished speaking, it had felt pertinent to double-check the standings. Yes, they are still top and stand two wins away from a second championship in 35 years.
Silverware remains on course for Anfield but what can also be said is that the title is set to be won by a team heading into transition. That is not how the best side in the country usually announce themselves.
Change is coming, although the “big summer” Virgil van Dijk referenced at the start of the week will be less extensive now that
he has joined Mohamed Salah in committing the next two years of his career to the club.
After a drawn-out process that was an unwelcome narrative to Liverpool’s otherwise successful first season under Slot, Van Dijk’s new contract was announced on Thursday
NIKKI DYER/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY IMAGES
“It is already a big summer,” Slot said, in reference to those statement deals. “There is a study being done that the longer a team plays together the more success it has.
“I think the core of the team, you want to keep together as long as you can, as long as they are performing in the best possible way, but it is also, in general, good to have some new energy in and around the place with one or two players. That I agree on.”
As ever with Liverpool’s power brokers, it was planned this way.
When Slot arrived on Merseyside from Feyenoord last summer he resolved to work with the squad bequeathed by Jürgen Klopp and spend the season assessing its strengths.
There were a number of reasons for this. First, the club’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, correctly believed the Dutchman would eke improvement out of some players and, second, Liverpool had not had time to properly prepare for that upcoming transfer window.
Hughes, right, joined the club from Bournemouth
ANDREW POWELL/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY IMAGES
The club owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) had only just persuaded Michael Edwards to return to the fold in an overarching role as its chief executive officer of football, some two years after he had stepped down as Liverpool’s sporting director. Hughes then joined and Slot followed.
That amount of change meant a collaborative working process had not been established and so the risk of entering the market for new players multiplied.
There is a saying internally that under FSG’s successful self-sustaining model the “money can’t be spent twice” and, in any case, there are examples not far from
Liverpool where the theme of change and spend, change and spend, has not worked.
It takes a brave leadership group to maintain that stand amid the inevitable noise from outside, yet the only signings last summer were Giorgi Mamardashvili, the £29million goalkeeper who was parked at Valencia for 12 months, and Federico Chiesa
for a low-jeopardy £10million.
That strategy has borne fruit. Liverpool are in a strong position, having spent a year doing their extensive background work on potential targets and building up financial resources.
Slot has a better understanding of his squad’s ability and together with Hughes, Edwards, the director of research Will Spearman and the chief scout Barry Hunter, can execute plans to enhance his options for next season. Oh, and they will go into the market as champions.
A multitude of names have already been linked, from attackers such as Alexander Isak (Newcastle United), Julián Alvarez (Atletico Madrid), Hugo Ekitike (Eintracht Frankfurt) and Antoine Semenyo (Bournemouth) to full backs and centre backs including Milos Kerkez, Dean Huijsen (both Bournemouth) and Jeremie Frimpong (Bayer Leverkusen), and a cast of thousands in between. Nico Williams (Athletic Bilbao), Arda Guler (Real Madrid), Anthony Gordon (Newcastle), Rayan Cherki (Lyon), Jorrel Hato (Ajax) and Jarrad Branthwaite (Everton)… it can feel like a new name emerges every day on social media.
Isak has scored 21 league goals so far this season and only Salah has more
STU FORSTER/GETTY IMAGES
Anfield’s present strikers, Darwin Núñez and Diogo Jota, have only 11 league goals between them this season and there is no doubt that Isak is admired. Liverpool have put themselves in a position whereby they would be an attractive proposition should the future of the Sweden international become an issue.
However, there is no suggestion that Newcastle are willing to sell and that prospect seems more unlikely should they grasp one of the five places now available as a gateway to the Champions League.
Imagine for a moment, though, that they were open to a deal. If the valuation of Isak is £150million, then there is little to suggest Liverpool would go to that level for one player.
There is always a decision on how best to allocate resources, evidenced in 2023 by the decision to abandon interest in Jude Bellingham because spending £115million on a single talent did not make sense when the entire midfield could be rebuilt by recruiting Alexis Mac Allister (£35million), Dominik Szoboszlai (£60million) and Ryan Gravenberch (£34million), for a combined £130million.
After a difficult first season at the club Gravenberch is now one of Europe’s finest midfielders and has been key to Liverpool’s title charge
PHIL NOBLE/REUTERS
Competition for Andrew Robertson is required at left back and Bournemouth have placed a price tag of £45million on the head of Kerkez, the Hungary international who was signed by Hughes when he was sporting director at the Vitality Stadium for about £15million from AZ Alkmaar.
Then, should
Trent Alexander-Arnold leave on a free transfer to Real Madrid, there is the question of whether a new right back is needed or whether Conor Bradley is challenged by existing members of the squad (Jarell Quansah, Joe Gomez and now Curtis Jones, who has played at full back).
If that is the case, do Liverpool need another centre back, especially as Ibrahima Konaté is heading into the final year of his deal and new contract talks do not appear particularly advanced?
Huijsen, the 19-year-old Spain international, has a £50million release clause, which makes Bournemouth particularly susceptible.
In midfield Slot has prioritised the aforementioned triumvirate of Gravenberch, Mac Allister and Szoboszlai, with Jones the only other midfielder to have started in the league.
Wataru Endo is seen as a finisher (he has played 143 minutes in the top flight) when Liverpool are leading by a slender margin, yet if the attack improves as Slot wants it to, his team will not be in a position where they are nervously looking to get over the line.
Liverpool have spent heavily in the past on players and would have spent more on Van Dijk than the £75million needed to recruit him from Southampton in January 2018 (a fee that is the equivalent to £107million today).
That was immediately offset by Philippe Coutinho’s £142million move to Barcelona and the ability to raise funds through sales has always been a centrepiece of the transfer strategy under FSG.
What of Harvey Elliott, who is viewed as an understudy to Salah and Szoboszlai? Does he fight for minutes again or take flight in search of the opportunity to show the best of himself? Kostas Tsimikas will find game time harder to come by if a new left back comes in. Núñez seems to have one foot out of the door, having failed to respond to Slot’s coaching.
Núñez has had another disappointing season at Anfield, and Slot may need a more reliable central striker
NICK POTTS/PA
There is always chatter about Luis Díaz’s contract, which has two years left to run.
The impending arrival of Mamardashvili has obvious repercussions for Caoimhin Kelleher, who already wants to play more regularly, but there is not an obvious destination. Is Mamardashvili the new No1? Or will Alisson retain top billing?
Liverpool spent more than £1billion between 1990 and their next title success, in 2020, in the search for the missing piece of the jigsaw. It was going to be Stan Collymore, for example, and then Paul Ince and after that Fernando Torres.
Now that they are on the cusp of being champions (should Arsenal lose away to Ipswich Town and Liverpool win at the King Power Stadium on Sunday, the race will be over) the puzzle should be complete.
And yet a new picture seems likely to emerge.
