Liverpool's Record Buys Under Scrutiny as Isak Finds Form

The summer of 2025 was supposed to be the start of a new Liverpool era. Fresh from Premier League title glory, the club threw money at the squad like a team determined to stay on top for years.

Florian Wirtz arrived for £116m, a German playmaker billed as the new creative heartbeat. Hugo Ekitike cost £69m, another young attacker to stretch defences. Then came the headline act: Alexander Isak, prised from St James’ Park to Anfield and installed as the most expensive player in British football history.

On paper, it looked ruthless. On grass, it quickly became messy.

Wirtz never quite grabbed games by the scruff of the neck. Ekitike’s season was shredded by an Achilles injury in April. Isak missed pre-season, then broke his leg. By the end of the campaign, Liverpool’s record centre-forward had just four goals in all competitions and a mountain of questions to answer.

Those questions did not ease when 2026-27 kicked off. At 26, with that price tag and that shirt on his back, patience was never going to last forever.

But something has shifted.

Isak has three goals in his last two Premier League outings. The movement looks sharper. The finishing, cleaner. The body language, lighter. A lost spark might just be flickering back into something more dangerous, and for now Andoni Iraola does not have to agonise over who leads his line.

The twist is coming, though. Ekitike is expected back around the turn of the year. When he returns, the dynamic changes.

Has Isak been lucky that he hasn’t had to fight off fierce competition while searching for form? Former Liverpool winger Jermaine Pennant doesn’t buy that idea.

“I wouldn't say fortunate because I think they would have found a way maybe to play them both.

The timing of Ekitike's injury, [Cody] Gakpo wasn't performing well. We know that Ekitike likes to drift out to the left, so it wouldn't have surprised me if at some point Isak would have started down the middle, Ekitike may have gone on to the left-hand side and come in on his right foot like Gakpo does and sometimes join up as two number nines.

“But they are two good players, great players and you can't have a player like that sitting on your bench. They would have made a way, I think, for them both to play at some point.”

That is the crux of Liverpool’s new reality. These are not squad fillers. These are players signed to define a cycle, not decorate it. And that pressure does not just sit on the forwards.

Heading into this season, club legend Robbie Fowler – still ‘God’ to the red half of Merseyside – admitted to GOAL that he was uneasy about Isak’s fitness and his ability to justify the investment.

He was blunt about what this campaign represents for the Swede and for the club’s transfer strategy.

“Absolutely. And that's the case with the managers as well,” Fowler said, when asked if Isak had to come good to quieten talk of further reinforcements. “The manager [Arne Slot] obviously didn’t deliver in the second year, so people questioned that. And as we all know, if people start questioning things, then there’s only one way you go.”

Isak has at least started to answer on the pitch. He found the net against Nottingham Forest. He scored again versus Ipswich. Those are the sort of fixtures where a Liverpool No.9 is expected to feast, and he did.

Europe, though, reminded everyone that this is still a work in progress. In Liverpool’s opening Champions League fixture of 2026-27, Isak drew a blank as Iraola’s side had to come from behind to beat Atletico Madrid 2-1 at Anfield. The team showed resilience. The centre-forward still owes them a big European night.

And just as he begins to rediscover rhythm, the club have raised the stakes again.

Liverpool have dropped another huge fee on attacking firepower, paying £123m for France international winger Bradley Barcola. Quick, direct, and hungry, he will not have come to Merseyside to watch from the bench.

Barcola’s arrival adds another sharp edge to an already crowded front line. Ekitike will be back. Wirtz will be desperate to prove he belongs at the heart of this project. Gakpo remains in the mix. Iraola’s “selection headache” is not some distant theory; it is looming, and it is expensive.

For now, Isak has the shirt and, finally, a little momentum. The question is no longer whether Liverpool will find a way to fit all these stars in.

It is whether Isak can play well enough that Iraola does not dare take him out.