The £39m truth about Liverpool summer spending as PSR myth exposed

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Alexander Isak signed on deadline day for a British record of £125 million(Image: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

For Liverpool it has been quite the summer transfer window.

Even after seeing a £35m move for Marc Guehi collapse in the final hours, the £446m, including add-ons, that was spent is a Premier League record.

For a club whose owners, Fenway Sports Group, have been pegged as being somewhat frugal in the transfer market over the years, the level of spending this summer has come as a surprise to many, and likely that list will include many of their rivals.

Alexander Isak became a Liverpool player on deadline day, arriving for a British record £125m, while Florian Wirtz’s £116.5m (£100m guaranteed) move from Bayer Leverkusen earlier in the summer had been the previous high watermark.

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Add in the £79m purchase of Hugo Ekitike, £40m spent on Milos Kerkez, £29.5m outlay on Jeremie Frimpong and £26m on Giovanni Leoni, and the running total gets to pretty lofty heights.

Liverpool already had the financial wherewithal to avoid any headaches when it came to the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations (PSR), borne from sitting out some windows, such as last season’s window where Federico Chiesa’s arrival from Juventus for £10m guaranteed plus add-ons was the only deal of note.

Giorgi Mamardashvili’s £25m plus £4m in add-ons signing from Valencia last August was a deal done with this summer as the start date after he spent last year with Valencia in La Liga.

From this financial year, which for Liverpool began on June 1, the additional amortisation costs that have been created sit at around £84.9m.

For some context, Chelsea’s were above £200m for the same period and with smaller revenues.

But this was a summer that, unlike recent years, the club had an abundance of saleable assets that they could move on, some of them for pure profit due to being academy graduates, others who had cleared three years of book value already and still held significant resale value.

Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz, Caoimhin Kelleher, Ben Doak, Jarell Quansah and Tyler Morton all left for hefty fees, while Kostas Tsimikas has gone on loan to AS Roma, and Harvey Elliott will spend this season at Aston Villa before an obligation to buy for £35m next summer.

That profit, at a guaranteed £65.5m, was £52.6m from his move to Bayern Munich.

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That means that the actual increase in amortisation costs against the accounts for 2023/24 comes in at £38.5m.

But the accounting profit from sales will stand at around £152.6m when it comes to guaranteed sums into the coffers and not including add-ons.

It means that, from an annual accounting perspective, the club’s profit far outstrips the increased amortisation costs as well as what will be a significant rise in the wage bill.

But the club and its owners are betting on these market moves being able to solidify and strengthen the position at the top of English football they currently enjoy.