Liverpool begin the 2026-27 Premier League season at St James’ Park on Sunday having spent £225m on two forwards last summer and nothing at all on a right winger this one. Mohamed Salah, who passed 250 Liverpool goals last season before leaving on a free transfer for Trabzonspor, is gone after nine years. Andoni Iraola’s first competitive match in charge will produce the first Liverpool line-up to start a league campaign without him since August 2016 — and the club has made no attempt to sign a like-for-like successor.
Nine years of guaranteed output, gone
The scale of the gap is not sentimental, it is arithmetical. Salah was the Premier League’s Player of the Season in 2024-25, driving Liverpool to the title with 29 league goals and 18 assists. No player in the division has come close to matching that combination of volume and consistency across a decade.
The end was far messier. Salah managed seven goals and seven assists in 27 Premier League appearances in 2025-26 and did not score in the league after 1 November. The relationship with then-manager Arne Slot broke down publicly: Salah said the two barely spoke and accused the club of making him a scapegoat, claiming he had been “thrown under the bus” after a 3-3 draw at Leeds in December. He left with a year still on his contract and Liverpool received nothing for him.
Liverpool finished fifth, 25 points behind champions Arsenal and 24 short of their own total from the title-winning season a year earlier. They lost 12 matches and conceded 53 goals. Slot was sacked on 30 May.
£225m of unfinished business
Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz arrived in the summer of 2025 for a combined £225m, rising towards £245m with add-ons. Neither has yet justified a fraction of it.
Isak made 22 appearances in all competitions and scored four goals, his season wrecked by a leg injury in December. The season before, at Newcastle, he scored 27 goals and added six assists in 42 games — the form that persuaded Liverpool to make him the most expensive signing in British football history. He returns to St James’ Park on Sunday as a player who has to prove that season was not the peak.
Wirtz played more — 49 appearances, seven goals, eight assists — but the numbers sit awkwardly against his final year at Bayer Leverkusen, where he produced 16 goals and 14 assists in 45 games. Shunted between the left flank and central areas under Slot, he rarely looked like the player who broke Bayern Munich’s monopoly on the Bundesliga.
Iraola has been direct about what he needs. “With Flo, especially, I think we need a very good version of Florian,” he said in pre-season, adding that he sees the German “more probably in that position behind the striker” rather than wide. On Isak, who arrived for pre-season in condition: “He’s going to be massive for us this season.”
No replacement, by design
Liverpool’s summer business says plainly where the money went. Jeremy Jacquet arrived from Rennes for £60m, Ronald Araujo on a season-long loan from Barcelona, and Ifeanyi Ndukwe for £2.6m — a defender who cannot play until 2027 because of work-permit issues. Ibrahima Konate left for Real Madrid on a free, Andy Robertson departed without a new contract offer, and Curtis Jones was sold to Inter Milan.
In attack, the only additions are 23-year-old Spain international Victor Munoz from Osasuna and Yankuba Minteh on loan from Brighton. The right-wing shirt is likely to go to 18-year-old academy graduate Rio Ngumoha, who started there in pre-season against Wrexham.
- 53 goals conceded in 2025-26, including 11 from corners — joint second-worst in the division with West Ham and Leeds
- Virgil van Dijk, now 35, played every league minute last season
- Iraola’s Bournemouth led the Premier League for fast-break shots with 128, at 1.95 metres per second of upfield progression and 2.98 passes per sequence
That last set of numbers is the bet. Iraola’s Bournemouth went 18 games unbeaten in 2025-26 playing vertical, high-pressing football that turned turnovers into shots faster than anyone else. It is a system built to feed a centre-forward who runs in behind and a No 10 who arrives late — precisely the profiles of Isak and Wirtz.
Liverpool have not replaced Salah because they have decided the £225m already on the books is the replacement. If Isak reaches the 20 league goals his Newcastle form suggests and Wirtz rediscovers his Leverkusen numbers, the decision looks shrewd. If either misses long stretches again, a fifth-place finish will not look like the floor.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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