Liverpool's transfer links for the summer transfer window are perhaps hinting at a change in strategy in the recruitment department
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Updated 16:23, 21 Mar 2025
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot and sporting director Richard Hughes could have a busy summer
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot and sporting director Richard Hughes could have a busy summer
(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Since the turn of decade, Liverpool have more often than not tended to look to Germany's Bundesliga for their first-team recruits. Of the 15 senior players signed permanently since the start of 2020, the Reds have brought in five players from the top flight in Germany, due to a general belief being that it is the league that most closely mirrors the Premier League for its intensity and quality.
Thiago Alcantara was the first, joining from Bayern Munich in a £25m deal after he sought a new challenge, away from Bavaria and joined the then champions of England under Jurgen Klopp.
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Less than a year later, Liverpool triggered the £36m release clause of Ibrahima Konate before the summer of 2023 saw three arrive in the shape of Dominik Szoboszlai, Wataru Endo and Ryan Gravenberch.
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With Jorg Schmadtke employed to act as a short-term facilitator for Klopp in the transfer window, the Reds added three from their German homeland in the space of two months as the club set about adding to Alexis Mac Allister's arrival and completing a long-awaited overhaul of their engine room ranks.
The club's recruitment department previously looked to Portugal's Primeira Liga in 2022 when the summer capture of Benfica's Darwin Nunez followed the January addition of Luis Diaz from Porto. Those deals were driven, in part, by former sporting director Julian Ward's expertise of the region and contacts in Portuguese football. Pep Lijnders was also given glowing recommendations when checking on Cody Gakpo of PSV as the Reds set about making their move ahead of the 2023 January transfer window.
It's interesting to note that since the start of 2020, Liverpool have purchased as many players from the Championship as they have from the Premier League, having brought in the lesser-spotted Ben Davies from Preston North End to help ease an injury crisis in January 2021 before Fabio Carvalho was confirmed as a Reds player shortly before Fulham were promoted in May 2022.
Having signed Mac Allister from Brighton to kick off that aforementioned reupholstering of their midfield in June 2023, you have to go back nearly three years for the September 2020 arrival of Diogo Jota from Wolves for the last time a Premier League player was signed.
As clubs in the top flight become more widely awash with money than at any other point in football, it is more difficult to sign players from clubs who, generally speaking, don't need the transfer fees.
Only Everton (Jake O'Brien, £16m), Southampton (Taylor Harwood-Bellis, £20m), Ipswich Town (Omari Hutchinson, £20m) and Wolves (Andre, £18m) paid under £25m for their most expensive recruits of the summer window. The latter two were newly promoted and Everton were still feeling the lasting effects of PSR problems, which are said to now finally be relenting. Manchester City did bring in Savinho for £21m from Girona but that fee was no doubt agreed due to both clubs being owned by the City Football Group.
The widespread wealth of the Premier League regulars means it is harder for buying clubs and theoretically leads to the talent pool being a wider and deeper one across the division. Liverpool, for their part, rarely plunder tens of millions back into the Premier League economy, with the 2020 deal for Jota offset by Ki-Jana Hoever heading the other way for around £10m. Mac Allister's capture, meanwhile, was a textbook example of the Reds taking advantage of a release clause that existed in a contract that was signed a little over six months earlier at the Amex.
Having seen their almost annual raiding of Southampton in the previous decade become something of a running joke due to the fact they signed six players at close to £140m between 2014 and 2018, times have most certainly changed on that front.
But with Liverpool being linked with Newcastle United's Alexander Isak and Milos Kerkez of Bournemouth, are the parameters of the recruitment department set to be altered? Slot has spoken regularly about the step up in intensity from the Eredivisie to the Premier League and for a manager who places so much emphasis on physicality and the importance of the duel, it's possible that the Dutchman might be looking to the rest of England's top flight when it comes to potential additions this summer.
Sporting director Richard Hughes has a sprawling contacts book across Spain and Italy and that much has been evident by the arrival of Federico Chiesa from Juventus and the future addition of Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili but as links to Isak and Kerkez go on, it's possible that a change in thinking is taking place inside the corridors of power at the AXA Training Centre.