What £100m star needs to do to be a Liverpool success

Liverpool's spending this summer has led to a lot of players being expected to deliver high returns.

After all, if your transfer fee is over £100m like Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak's were, then you would expect them to be 'world class' and the fans decide what constitutes success or failure.

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Team performance is paramount, but on an individual level, the players need to be difference makers for the Reds. Arne Slot won the Premier League last season, now it's all about retaining our crown.

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But what tangible measurement is best to decide whether Wirtz and Isak's moves have worked out or not? Given they are attacking players, surely goals and assists numbers matter most, but is it really that simple? A new report has revealed what value for money would actually look like.

How can Wirtz and Isak succeed?

According to ESPN, the €125m (£116m) transfer fee to sign Wirtz represents 17.49% of Liverpool's revenue - based off the 2023-24 financial reports, the most up to date figures the club has published.

That relative fee is the same as it cost the Reds to acquire Andy Carroll back in January 2011 since he moved for £35m which was 19% of the club's £184m revenue - a figure from Twenty First Group.

In the Englishman's time at Liverpool, he delivered six goals and two assists, which should quite easily be doable for Wirtz. Of course the obvious caveats are that Carroll is regarded as a failure by the fans and the two play in different positions on the pitch, yet they are still financially comparable.

FSG have managed to take the club to a far better place than the Reds were in 2011 and the £116m fee quite rightly commands fans to have certain expectations, but let's not go over board with him.

Later in ESPN's report, Isak's €144m (£125m) move is noted to represent 20.15% of the club's revenue and in their view, '[it] tend[s] to work out that when clubs break their transfer records, they tend to do it for about as much bas Liverpool did for Isak, 20% of their revenue.'

This isn't necessarily to suggest that he was an over-pay or an under-pay, the significance of the transfer fee appears to match up to the ambition of the football club and the quality of the player.

His relative value is only 1% of the club's revenue more than it cost to sign Carroll in 2011, yet the attacking returns are likely to be completely different. Perhaps he's then better value for money?

Of course, the added context with Liverpool signing a striker like Isak is that he's joining a club that already has Hugo Ekitike embedded into the team, an up and coming striker with three goals and an assist to his name in four games. Moreover, the Frenchman didn't have Premier League experience.

The best way to judge any of Liverpool's new signings is by looking at their overall impact once the season has come an end, but let it be known that this past summer's spending was within the club's means and in terms of percentage of revenue spent, the Reds are now far better at assessing value.

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