Liverpool's £300m Gamble: Isak's Revival and Ekitike's Shadow

The summer of 2025 felt like a statement. Liverpool, fresh from Premier League title glory, didn’t just tweak a winning side – they detonated the transfer market.

• Florian Wirtz for £116m.
• Hugo Ekitike for £69m.
• Alexander Isak, prised from St James’ Park and anointed the most expensive player in British football.

It was supposed to be a reloading of a champion. Instead, for long stretches, it looked like a cautionary tale.

A record signing stuck in neutral

Wirtz, the German playmaker signed to thread passes through crowded penalty areas, never quite found the rhythm or influence expected of him. Ekitike’s season was shredded in April by an Achilles injury.

Isak’s story cut even deeper.

He missed pre-season, then suffered a broken leg. The record signing staggered through the campaign with just four goals in all competitions. For a club that had spent so aggressively, that return was brutal. For a forward carrying the weight of a fee that large, it was suffocating.

By the start of 2026-27, the questions had sharpened. Was this a misfire? Was Liverpool’s marquee striker already drifting towards the “expensive mistake” pile?

Isak has pushed back.

Three goals in his last two Premier League games have changed the temperature around Anfield. The runs are sharper, the finishes cleaner, the body language lighter. A lost spark looks like it’s catching again, and for now Andoni Iraola does not have to agonise over who leads his line.

Ekitike’s absence: blessing or missed test?

That calm, though, has come with a caveat.

Ekitike is expected back around the turn of the year. Until then, Isak operates without genuine, like-for-like competition in the central role. Has he been lucky that the battle for his place has effectively been postponed?

Jermaine Pennant doesn’t buy that.

Speaking to GOAL in association with NetBet Casino, the former Liverpool winger rejected the idea that Isak has simply benefited from Ekitike’s misfortune.

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

He pointed to the timing of Ekitike’s injury and Cody Gakpo’s struggles. With Gakpo out of form, the tactical door was already ajar.

“We know that Ekitike likes to drift out to the left,” Pennant explained. “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’s the crux of it. In Pennant’s eyes, Liverpool’s problem was never going to be “either/or” with Isak and Ekitike. It was how to unleash both without unbalancing the side.

‘Absolutely’: Fowler’s warning

Inside Anfield, nobody understands the pressure on a Liverpool No. 9 quite like Robbie Fowler. The club legend, still hailed as ‘God’ by the Kop, has never hidden his concern over Isak’s fitness and reliability.

Heading into the new season, Fowler told GOAL he worried about whether the Swede could finally deliver at the level his price tag demands – and what it would mean if he didn’t.

He was clear: this season has to be the one.

“Absolutely,” Fowler said when asked if Isak must come good to end talk of further reinforcements. “And that's the case with the managers as well. 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.”

The message was unmistakable. At a club of Liverpool’s size, once doubt creeps in – about a manager, about a record signing – the slide can be swift.

Goals, but not yet the complete answer

Isak has begun to answer back on the pitch.

He found the net against Nottingham Forest. He scored again versus Ipswich. Those games didn’t just pad his stats; they gave him rhythm, a sense of timing that had deserted him for most of the previous campaign.

Europe, though, reminded him the job is far from done.

In Liverpool’s opening Champions League fixture of 2026-27, a high-stakes night at Anfield against Atletico Madrid, the Swede drew a blank. The Reds still came from behind to win 2-1, but the narrative around Isak remains unfinished. The team showed it can dig itself out without him on the scoresheet. For a striker of his stature, that’s both a relief and a warning.

Barcola arrives – and the real selection fight looms

Just as Isak has begun to look settled, Liverpool have raised the stakes again.

The club have dropped another huge fee, £123m, on France international winger Bradley Barcola. It’s a signing that does more than add flair out wide. It shifts the entire attacking puzzle.

Barcola’s arrival will crowd the forward line and crank up the pressure on everyone ahead of the ball. Wirtz still needs to justify his own massive fee. Ekitike will return hungry, desperate to reclaim the trajectory his Achilles injury interrupted. Gakpo will fight to prove he’s not been overtaken.

And in the middle of it all stands Isak.

For now, he has the shirt and the goals to back it up. The roar is back when he scores, the doubts slightly quieter. But the real test is coming fast: a fully fit Ekitike, a record-breaking Barcola, and a manager in Iraola who suddenly has more firepower than spaces to fill.

Liverpool spent big to build an attack that frightens Europe. Over the next few months, we find out whether their record striker is the cornerstone of that project – or the first piece to be moved when the next reshuffle comes.