Liverpool's £300m Dilemma: Isak's Revival and Ekitike's Return
The money was never subtle. It was a statement.
The summer of 2025 saw Liverpool spend like a club determined not just to defend a Premier League crown, but to reshape the era that followed it. Florian Wirtz arrived for £116m, Hugo Ekitike for £69m, and Alexander Isak became the most expensive player in British football when he traded St James’ Park for Anfield.
It was supposed to be a new front line of fear. It didn’t land that way.
Wirtz, the gifted German playmaker, never quite imposed himself as planned. Ekitike’s season was wrecked in April by an Achilles injury. Isak, who missed pre-season and then broke his leg, stumbled through a miserable first campaign, finishing with just four goals in all competitions. For a record signing at 26, the questions were sharp and relentless.
They didn’t stop when 2026-27 kicked off either.
Isak walked into the new season under a spotlight, his price tag and fitness record dragged up every time he miscontrolled a ball or snatched at a chance. Yet something has shifted. Three goals in his last two Premier League games hint at a player finally finding rhythm. The movement looks sharper, the finishes cleaner, the body language lighter.
For now, Andoni Iraola no longer has to agonise over who leads the line. The shirt is Isak’s.
That might not last.
Ekitike is expected back around the turn of the year, and the obvious question hangs over the whole project: has Isak effectively been protected by the lack of genuine competition while he searched for form?
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 absence.
“I wouldn't say fortunate because I think they would have found a way maybe to play them both,” Pennant said.
He pointed to timing and roles. Cody Gakpo was struggling. Ekitike likes to drift off that left flank. In Pennant’s eyes, a solution was already there on the tactics board.
“The timing of Ekitike's injury, [Cody] Gakpo wasn't performing well. We know that Ekitike likes to drift out to the left, 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.”
Pennant’s view underlines the stakes. This isn’t a squad padded with squad-fillers. These are headline acts who expect the stage, not a seat.
Robbie Fowler saw the risk early.
Heading into the new season, the Liverpool legend – still “God” to many on the Kop – admitted to GOAL that Isak’s fitness and reliability worried him. This year, Fowler argued, had to be the one where the Swede proved he could carry the weight of that transfer fee and the responsibility that comes with it.
He framed it bluntly, tying Isak’s form to the club’s wider decision-making.
He said of the striker needing to deliver to quiet talk of further attacking reinforcements: “Absolutely. 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 warning is clear. At Liverpool, doubts don’t sit quietly in the background. They grow. They push people out. Managers, and strikers, feel it first.
Isak has at least started to push back. Goals against Nottingham Forest and Ipswich steadied the conversation, suggested a forward finally loosening the tension in his game. The Champions League, though, reminded everyone that this is still a work in progress.
In Liverpool’s opening group fixture of 2026-27, Isak failed to score as the Reds came from behind to beat Atletico Madrid 2-1 at Anfield. The team found a way; their record signing did not. On nights like that, the microscope returns.
And just as he seems to be climbing out from under it, another challenge has been dropped right in front of him.
Liverpool have gone big again, this time on Bradley Barcola. The France international winger has cost £123m and brings pace, directness and another high-profile name into an already crowded front line. He doesn’t just add depth. He adds decisions.
At some point soon, Iraola will have to juggle Isak, a fit-again Ekitike, a record-breaking Barcola and the rest of his attacking cast. Systems will bend. Roles will overlap. Someone will sit.
For now, Isak has the shirt and the goals to justify it. The question is simple and brutal: when everyone is finally fit and firing, will he still be the one Liverpool build around, or just another expensive piece in a puzzle that keeps changing shape?
