Liverpool's six summer signings cost a record £415m, but the BBC Sport grading of the window reads like a mixed verdict on the rebuild itself. The club finished 24 points worse off than the title-winning season before, and none of the six started the final league game against Brentford. That is a blunt enough snapshot of where the squad ended up.

Why the grades point to a patchy rebuild

The ratings handed out by BBC Sport split the window into clear winners and losers. Hugo Ekitiké and Milos Kerkez were the two arrivals who drew the strongest approval, while Alexander Isak was given a D and Jeremie Frimpong a C. That mix is the point. Liverpool did not buy badly across the board, but the money outlay was so heavy that the misses stand out sharply.

Arne Slot described the team as being in “a little transition”, and that feels fair enough. It does not excuse everything, but it explains why the season never settled into the kind of rhythm a record-spending side would want. Liverpool still finished fifth in the Premier League on 59 points from 37 games, with a 17-8-12 record and 62 goals scored.

Where the strongest and weakest returns came from

The clearest positive was Kerkez. Milos Kerkez's rival? No. Kerkez played 34 of Liverpool's 38 league games and started 27 of them, which tells you he became a proper first-choice option rather than a name on the bench. Virgil van Dijk's verdict was also upbeat, saying Kerkez was “making big progress... pretty clear you definitely see an improvement”.

Hugo Ekitiké was the other real success story in the brief, with 11 Premier League goals before his Achilles rupture in April. The BBC article also refers to a 17-goal, six-assist debut season before injury, but that figure is not the verified league total used here. Even with that caveat, the broader point stands: Liverpool got genuine attacking return from him.

Isak is the harder case. He scored just three times in 14 top-flight appearances for Liverpool, a return that explains why the public and the grading turned so quickly against him. The D is not just a harsh letter, it is a reflection of output that fell far short of the fee and the expectations around the move.

Liverpool's January and summer work now looks expensive without looking complete. Florian Wirtz, Alejandro Garnacho and Liam Delap all sit in the wider conversation around recruitment, but this window will be judged first on the players Liverpool actually bought. On that basis, the club got enough from Ekitiké and Kerkez to avoid a full write-off, yet the overall balance still leans towards underachievement.

If the season had been closer to a title defence, the criticism would land even harder. As it stands, the more accurate reading is a costly rebuild that produced a few clear positives, too many flat returns and a fifth-place finish that left Liverpool 24 points down on the previous campaign.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →