The club who began 2025 with an eight-point advantage at the Premier League summit could end it with a greater deficit to the leaders. A year of triumph and tragedy for Liverpool has also featured unprecedented spending. Glance at the league table and their transfer business and it suggests they have spent £450m to get worse. They will enter 2026 exactly half-way through their Premier League campaign. If the half-term report for the team reads ‘could do better’, that applies to most of their signings.
Giovanni Leoni, of course, cannot do better in the second half of the season, as he is ruled out for the remainder of it. The Italian is blameless for that and, to varying degrees, others can plead mitigating circumstances for their slight returns. But so far Jeremie Frimpong has only made two league starts. Alexander Isak only has two Premier League goals (and none in the Champions League). Florian Wirtz only has one league goal and assist. In each case, the same statistics in the next five months would render their debut campaign at Anfield a failure.
