When Liverpool beat Chelsea in the 2024 Carabao Cup final, manager Jürgen Klopp branded the victory the "most special" of his storied career.
He did so not because of the stature of the competition, nor because of the prize money on offer, but because of the nature of his team's triumph. With Liverpool's squad decimated by injury, Klopp was forced to field several academy players at Wembley, and his team defied expectations to win 1-0 thanks to an extra-time header from captain Virgil van Dijk.
While Klopp and his squad were lavished with praise, Mauricio Pochettino's expensively assembled Chelsea side were ridiculed, with Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville infamously dubbing the Blues "billion-pound bottle-jobs" on account of their heavy transfer spending over recent years.
Less than two years on, however, and it is Arne Slot's Liverpool who are now the subject of intense scrutiny following an unprecedented summer in which they spent £446 million to sign seven new players -- the highest outlay by a Premier League club in a single window.
Having romped to the title last season, it seemed like the Reds' stunning summer was destined to take Slot's squad to the next level. But 11 games into the new campaign, Liverpool's title defense lies in tatters, with a disappointing run of five defeats in six league games leaving them in eighth place, eight points adrift of leaders Arsenal.
Having been the masters of consistency last season, the champions now look like a team in transition and are quickly learning that "winning" the transfer window does not always equate to instant success on the pitch. But how difficult is it for elite teams to integrate new players? And is it only a matter of time before Liverpool's massive summer rebuild starts to yield winning results?
We delve deeper, with the help of former chief executive and sporting director at AS Monaco, Tor-Kristian Karlsen.
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New arrivals impact a team's intensity
Despite last season's title success, it was always likely to be a transformative summer for Liverpool. Having signed only winger Federico Chiesa ahead of the 2024-25 campaign, the Reds needed a revamp, particularly in attack.
Sources have told ESPN that forwards Luis Díaz and Darwin Núñez had both expressed a desire to leave the club, while the tragic death of striker Diogo Jota further impacted the Reds' transfer strategy. With a number of first-team departures to offset, Liverpool brought in seven new signings, including £69 million for Eintracht Frankfurt forward Hugo Ekitike, £100 million to land Bayer Leverkusen midfielder Florian Wirtz and £125 million to sign Newcastle United striker Alexander Isak.
Despite a strong start to the campaign, Liverpool followed up their run of seven successive wins in all competitions with a dismal sequence of seven defeats in 10, with both Wirtz and Isak failing to hit the ground running at Anfield.
"When people come in for huge money and there's lots of expectation, it's easy to be disappointed," former Liverpool midfielder David Thompson told ESPN. "It's about managing expectations, but what I expect is even if things aren't going well, when you're playing for Liverpool, you've still got to roll your sleeves up and do something for the team. That might look like working hard, closing down from the front, sprinting -- just basically working super hard.
"There is work rate there from the lads that have come in, but it's not the same as what Liverpool had with Diaz or Núñez or Jota, particularly out of possession. So even if you can't bring your game in-possession as a new player, you need to be able to bring a bit of tempo and energy off the ball."
Thompson was a product of Liverpool's academy, making his first-team debut in 1996, and he credits the senior members of the squad with helping to set the standards for incoming players during his time at the club.
"The big example I think of when I was coming through is Ian Rush," he said. "I was shocked at the level of defensive work that he did, even in the practice games. It had always been highlighted through the youth teams, but actually when we got to Melwood and started training with the first team, the amount of intense traps that Rush would set was insane. It was probably abnormal how he could go from being so still, just looking uninterested to then just going 'boom,' and he'd be straight on you and taking the ball off you.
"That's what I always expect from Liverpool; that tempo and intensity."
That lack of intensity is evidenced by Liverpool's pressing stats this season. In terms of high turnovers -- the amount of times a team turns over possession high up the pitch -- Liverpool are averaging just 6.9 per game, according to Opta. This is down from 8.1 high turnovers per game last season, and 10.3 in Klopp's final season in 2023-24.
Liverpool are also posting less favorable numbers in terms of PPDA (opposition passes allowed per defensive action), which assesses how many opposition passes a team permits before making an interception. In this metric, the lower the PPDA the better, but this season Liverpool's PPDA stands at an average of 11.0, up from 10.3 last term and 8.9 in 2023-24.
"While Liverpool's ambition to upgrade from a position of strength does make sense on many levels, such a strategy does carry some inevitable risks. Predicting the impact of one new arrival in a settled team is one thing, whereas predicting the combined effect against the backdrop of an uprooted structure and culture is quite another.
"Liverpool's trademark strategy under Arne Slot -- intense pressing, quick regains and split-second transitions -- has arguably also been weakened by the departures of lesser-sung heroes like Diaz and Núñez. Though the current squad has seen a significant increase in mere talent and quality, the movements, the timing and collective instincts are unsurprisingly still to be properly embedded." -- Karlsen
Craig Burley discusses Florian Wirtz's current form with Germany and how that's linked to his move to Liverpool.
Wholesale changes can create problems
Liverpool are not the only Premier League side to have encountered teething problems after a significant rebuild. Since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital took over at Chelsea in 2022, the London club have regularly been held up as a cautionary tale with regards to reckless spending in the transfer market.
Including loans, Chelsea have made 53 signings under Boehly at a cost of over £1.5 billion, having signed fewer than 30 players in the period between their 2016-17 title win and 2022. While things at the club have been less chaotic under current head coach Enzo Maresca, Chelsea's scattergun approach to transfers proved problematic for some of the Italian's predecessors -- including Graham Potter, who was tasked with managing a massively bloated squad during his seven months in charge during the 2022-23 season.
"We tried to support [the club's transfer strategy] as best we could, but it left us with a challenge of a lot of players after January, and then they can't go anywhere," Potter told The Telegraph last year. "A few of them just had to sit on the floor.
"It's not ideal, of course. Everybody recognized it was a really difficult situation because you can only pick 11 players and if you've got 20 players not playing, it doesn't matter where you are. If you can find a coach out there who says, 'yeah, that's the best condition for me,' I'd be very surprised."
Indeed, making significant alterations to any team is rarely conducive to instant success -- something Nottingham Forest learned the hard way after winning promotion from the Championship ahead of the 2022-23 season.
Having triumphed in the playoffs, Forest desperately needed to bolster their threadbare squad with Premier League quality and famously made 21 first-team signings in the summer of 2022. Steve Cooper's side smashed the British record for signings made by one club during a single window -- spending more than the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain -- and their £163.4 million outlay represented a record for newly promoted side in the Premier League and was more than the combined spend of every club in Dutch Eredivisie.
Still, Forest struggled in the top flight, winning just one of their first 11 games and finishing the season in 16th place -- just four points above the relegation zone.
Fast forward to last season, and Forest enjoyed a stunning campaign in which they secured European qualification for the first time in 30 years under Nuno Espirito Santo, but achieving such a feat required patience and continuity, with players needing time to forge relationships on an off the pitch.
With that in mind, it is perhaps not a coincidence that Liverpool's two most recent title wins followed transfer windows in which their activity was limited. After winning the UEFA Champions League in 2019, the Reds' most expensive acquisition was Fulham's Harvey Elliott, who commanded an initial compensation fee of £1.5 million. The next season, Liverpool went on to win the Premier League title by an 18-point margin.
While the club have never been afraid to spend big to sign players they feel can transform the squad -- such as Van Dijk (£75 million) and goalkeeper Alisson Becker (£66.8 million) -- their £446 million summer spending spree was out of the ordinary, and that has presented Slot with a host of unique challenges to try and navigate.
"Every Liverpool supporter has been having sleepless nights trying to work out what system they should play and players they should use," former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports last month following the Reds' 2-1 defeat to Manchester United. "Liverpool's business didn't feel Liverpool-like, it felt Real Madrid-like in terms of signing the most expensive players.
"When you have spent big money, you have to find a way of getting these players on the pitch. Carlo Ancelotti was the master of that. Liverpool's summer has always been about planning. When you look on paper at the end of the [Manchester United] game, it was a mess."
"Wholesale changes -- which involve high-profile, £100 million signings that you want on the pitch and can't really drop -- don't just make for a very complex puzzle, but they come with short-term implications that are harder to work out than in the case of two or three more routine acquisitions.
"As much as tactics and performance data are key, the human element is an equally important part of a squad overhaul. These days, a player whose contract is about to run down may be allowed to leave regardless of impact on dressing-room chemistry, with data and algorithms driving the decisions.
Old-school factors such as social glue, team spirit and continuity are hard to quantify yet profoundly influential." -- Karlsen
'ESPN FC' crew debate if Liverpool manager Arne Slot knows his best starting line-up.
Patience is required for long-term success
Of course, Liverpool's tumultuous summer is not the only reason for their struggles. Tactically, Slot has at times been unable to affect games with the same efficacy as he did last term, while the form and fitness of key personnel has posed more problems for the Dutchman to solve. Add to that the fact Slot and his players are grieving the loss of a beloved teammate, and it's perhaps little wonder that the champions have looked off-color.
Still, football can be an unforgiving business, and the fact remains that Liverpool have to find solutions that will enable them start getting results sooner rather than later.
While Liverpool's transition is proving more painful than anticipated, the long-term rewards of their summer recruitment drive could prove lucrative. But with the margin for error at the top level smaller than ever, Slot's side need to click into gear soon, or else it could be too late to salvage their season.
"Ultimately, the Liverpool rebuild is not of the kind that happens after a relegation or mass failure. Liverpool remain a leading club in every aspect, but the timeframe for reproducing the collectively astute performances of recent seasons must account for new signings bedding in, new relationships to form and fluidity to establish.
With patience, the machinery can re-engage. Without it, impatience breeds ad-hoc solutions, incoherence and, basically, just makes things worse.
"Perhaps the Liverpool top management underestimated such complexities, but the decision to upgrade from strength was bold and forward-looking. Now they must bite the bullet and see it through." -- Karlsen