Alexander Isak told what he must do to shake off $169M Liverpool price tag
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Stan Collymore, who joined Liverpool in 1995 for a then British transfer record of £8.5 million ($11.5 million), has offered his take on how Alexander Isak can make people forget about the big fee that his move commanded this summer.
Isak made his debut for Liverpool in the Champions League against Atletico Madrid, putting in a promising performance against Diego Simeone's side.
"I think that the difference between breaking the transfer record 30 years ago and now is that it’s hard to adjust for inflation and work out how similar the deals were," Collymore said.
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"Kieran Maguire worked out that an inflation-adjusted figure for all the transfers has Alan Shearer at £250 million ($338 million) to Newcastle, and my move to Liverpool was maybe £216m ($293 million), so my transfer fee was really a massive outlier back then in a way that Isak’s isn’t.
"At the time, I was breaking the £7.0 million ($9.5 million) record for Andy Cole to Manchester United from the season before, and maybe Roy Keane before that from Nottingham Forest to Manchester United.
"So, while there are incremental jumps these days, back then the increases were more like leaps, the equivalent of going from £150m to £300m (c. $200 million to $400 million) within the course of a season or two.
"Now, though, I don’t think [the size of the transfer fee] matters.
Birmingham dropped £10 million ($13 million) on Jay Stansfield when they were in the third tier.
"Big fees are just par for the course in England.
Hopefully he'll have had three or four goals under his belt at that stage, and we will be talking about football.
"I’ve seen Florian Wirtz interviewed, and nobody really cared about his transfer fee in the grand scheme of things