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Liverpool are closing in on a move for Florian Wirtz(Image: Lars Baron/Getty Images)

Former Liverpool CEO Peter Moore believes Fenway Sports Group will want to offload players and balance the books if Liverpool sign Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen this summer.

The Premier League champions are hoping to make the Germany international the most expensive player in Anfield history after tabling a bid worth £109m earlier this week.

If the offer for Wirtz, who has shunned interest from Manchester City and Bayern Munich in favour of entering negotiations over a move to Anfield, is accepted by Leverkusen, it would dwarf the £85m fee that the Reds committed to paying Benfica when they signed Darwin Nunez from in June 2022.



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The signing of the 22-year-old attacker would take Liverpool's spending to shy of £140m, following the £29.5m that was paid to sign Jeremie Frimpong from the same Bundesliga side.

Meanwhile, Liverpool could also be in the hunt for a new left-back, with Bournemouth and Hungary star Milos Kerkez attracting interest from Anfield after a couple of impressive Premier League campaigns on the South Coast.

The Cherries are expected to ask for around £45m if they are to part ways with Kerkez, who appeared to bid farewell to the club in an Instagram post after the final Premier League game of the season last week.

But Moore believes Liverpool's owners, FSG, would want to sanction a few departures this summer to balance the books and also compensate for the increased wages if several new faces are to arrive at Anfield before September 1.

"I think three or four key signings will be critical," Moore, who served as CEO between June 2017 and August 2020, told talkSPORT.

"There are going to be some hard decisions on players who are going to have to leave, and if Wirtz is real - I know my owners pretty well - then somebody is going to have to go to a) get the money [back] and b) make room in the payroll salary for that."

If Liverpool are to offer out a string of new contracts this summer, then they will need to make sure they stay in line with the new financial regulations affecting clubs in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.

In 2022, UEFA announced that the old Financial Fair Play regulation had been replaced by a squad-cost ratio calculation.

Clubs competing in UEFA competitions will be unable to splash more than 70% of their revenue on player wages, transfers, and agent fees from the 2025/26 season onwards.

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Earlier this year, The Athletic claimed Liverpool should have no concerns over the new UEFA framework and estimated the total squad-cost ratio at Anfield to stand at roughly 53% for the current season.

Since then, however, both Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk have penned new deals at Anfield, while Trent Alexander-Arnold, who last April was offered terms to become one of the highest-paid full-backs in world football, has departed the club to sign for Real Madrid.

On Friday, Liverpool confirmed that they had received a sum from Real Madrid, believed to be around £10m, to release Alexander-Arnold from his contract 29 days early, therefore making him eligible for the early stages of this summer's Club World Cup in the United States.


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