It took Arne Slot just two summer transfer windows at Liverpool to blow predecessor Jurgen Klopp out of the water in regards to transfer spend following the acquisition of Florian Wirtz
Liverpool manager Arne Slot is making up for lost time this summer after opening the transfer floodgates at Anfield. And it has taken the Dutchman just a few weeks to break the rule predecessor Jurgen Klopp sought to adhere to above all others in the market.
Klopp, 58, previously made a point of stressing his morals when it came to keeping Liverpool financially solvent. And that meant not necessarily spending on a par with the likes of Manchester City and Manchester United, who copped criticism from the former Reds boss for their free-spending ways in the past.
Of course that changed over time as Liverpool made allowances in opening their chequebook so Klopp could compete. But the German was staunchly against spending £100million fees on individuals when he first arrived at Anfield – a line Liverpool have now crossed with the blockbuster signing of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen in a British record deal worth up to £116m, with £100m of that being guaranteed.
“If you bring one player in for £100m or whatever and he gets injured then it all goes through the chimney,” Klopp warned back in 2016 after United forked out £89m to re-sign Paul Pogba from Juventus. “The day that this is football, I’m not in a job any more, because the game is about playing together.
“That is why somebody invented passes so these players can play together. It’s not about running with the ball because you can do it all the time. Building the group is not my unique idea – it is necessary to be successful in football.
“Other clubs can go out and spend more money and collect top players, yes. Do I have to do it differently to that? I don’t know exactly how much money we could spend because nobody has told me up to this point, ‘No, no, no you can’t do this.’
“If I spend money it is because I am trying to build a real team. You can win championships, you can win titles. But maybe there is a manner in which you want it. It is about how it is.”
The Merseysiders have added 22-year-old Wirtz to their armoury and could have to shell out as much as £116m if certain conditions are met. And that addition means Liverpool have now spent more money in this window than any other in their history to date.
Slot recruited Jeremie Frimpong (also from Leverkusen) for £29.5m earlier in the summer, while goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili has joined from Valencia for an initial £25m, along with £4m in add-ons – with that deal agreed last summer counting towards their 2025 spending. Not only that, but a £40m move for Bournemouth left-back Milos Kerkez is also in the pipeline.
Provided the Kerkez deal goes through as expected, that would take Liverpool’s total spend this summer to roughly £215m (providing all bonus clauses are met). And despite the fact the transfer window has been open for less than one month, that would far eclipse the previous record for total spend in any other window.
The closest Klopp came to matching that sum was in the summer of 2018 when he spent around £170m on new signings. That included Alisson from Roma (£65m), Naby Keita from RB Leipzig (£53m), Fabinho from Monaco (£39m) and Xherdan Shaqiri from Stoke (£13.5m), though the investments paid off as they won the Champions League that season.
Eventually, Klopp wasn’t too far from overseeing a couple of nine-digit deals himself, considering Liverpool signed Virgil van DIjk and Darwin Nunez for £75m and £85m, respectively. Van Dijk became the most expensive defender in football history at the time of his move from Southampton, and Klopp later walked back his comments concerning exorbitant transfer fees.
“These kind of things happen. When you want to sign a striker as exciting as Darwin is, that’s the market and you have to pay the price,” he conceded in 2023. “I said so many things in my life and life caught me then later and showed me that my imagination was obviously not clear enough for how quickly life can change. That’s how it is.
“After that [comment about Pogba], we bought a centre-half for quite a decent fee [£75m for Van Dijk], we bought a goalie for quite a decent fee [Alisson]. Our situation is always the same, we try to level it somehow [with sales], the things we invest in the boys and in the players we sell, it’s kind of that it’s not going out of any kind of range and that worked so far, but I know, I heard it immediately.”
To Slot’s credit, he won the Premier League in his debut campaign despite barely spending at all last summer. It’s only fair that one, therefore, takes into account that spread of cost, which brings his net spend to a more modest £100m or so per summer window so far.
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