Liverpool are rather good when it comes to transfers.
While no club is perfect, the Reds’ composed and clinical nature when the market swings open has seen a stratospheric resurgence over the past decade, with Jurgen Klopp replacing Brendan Rodgers in 2015 and going on to win the full gamut.
However, there have been some stinkers. Let’s take a look at the worst over the past 15 years, the few howlers that sparsely punctuated Klopp’s tenure and a few of the misfires from before.
Liverpool's worst modern signings
Dreadful deals were few and far between across the span of the Klopp era, but Naby Keita’s stands out as the worst. The Guinea international arrived from RB Leipzig with a weight of expectation, but injury upon injury ruined the £53m man’s chances of becoming a superstar. Still, he bagged Premier League and Champions League titles.
Klopp has earned widespread plaudits for both his illustrious Liverpool tenure and indeed leaving the club in a great position for successor Arne Slot, whose squad are runaway leaders at the top of the 2024/25 Premier League table.
However, he didn’t get everything on the money. Indeed, Klopp oversaw the signing of Darwin Nunez from Benfica in July 2022, for a club-record £85m figure.
From a financial standpoint, Nunez’s arrival might be the worst of the past few decades, though he’s still posted 61 goal involvements from 132 appearances and his woes have been mitigated by Liverpool’s overarching successes.
Despite his big-money tag, Nunez has paled in comparison to Mohamed Salah, Luis Diaz and Cody Gakpo this season, and a summer exit looks to be on the cards.
Mohamed Salah
39 (37)
30
22
Cody Gakpo
38 (25)
16
5
Luis Diaz
38 (28)
13
4
Diogo Jota
25 (15)
8
3
Darwin Nunez
36 (16)
6
5
Federico Chiesa
10 (3)
1
2
Before that, though, stood a litany of arrivals who proved to flatter to deceive. The money banked from Luis Suarez’s sale in 2014, for example, was redirected toward the likes of Lazar Markovic, Rickie Lambert and Mario Balotelli, all of whom fell heavily by the wayside.
Markovic, in particular, proved a dismal deal to have engineered. The young winger arrived from Benfica for £20m but failed to provide any semblance of skill or suitability within the Anfield system.
Talking of Suarez, though, there was another striker who arrived alongside the Uruguay star, one of the distinguished forwards of his generation, for a heftier price.
Despite that, he endured a bleak ride on Merseyside.
Andy Carroll's Liverpool career in numbers
Fernando Torres had forced his way out to Chelsea in a £50m deal, breaking the British transfer record. It was late January, 2011. Liverpool needed to act.
Andy Carroll was the man for the job, signed from Newcastle United for a £35m fee. He was touted for big things, and that was a club-record figure for Liverpool.
Suarez had joined from Ajax for around £23m a few weeks earlier, a smart fee that looks amusing when presently viewing Liverpool’s long list of transfer activity in 2025.
Though he started strong with a debut goal against Manchester City, Carroll quickly found his time at Anfield to be a struggle, netting only 11 goals across 58 appearances in all competitions as he struggled to acclimatise to the way of things in a pre-Klopp Liverpool world.
Carroll was signed in the same monetary ballpark as Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, further illustrating the disappointing nature of the deal. It’s one to forget.
BBC’s Gary Lineker noted it to be a “lonely” chapter in the English centre-forward’s career, and though he went on to find some measure of success with West Ham United, who ended his Liverpool nightmare in 2013, paying the Reds £15m, it’s a blot on the copybook to be sure.
Andy Carroll's happy ending
Carroll’s nomadic career saw him achieve comparative levels of success with the Hammers before moving back to Newcastle, where injuries at the highest level began to envelop him.
Venturing off to the French second division with Amiens in 2023, the prominent figure scored just four goals across 35 matches before making the curious switch to Bordeaux last summer, the 35-year-old joining the financially-stricken club in an effort to help them restore their place at the top of the French pyramid.
Bordeaux, six-time French champions, last lifting the trophy in 2009, relinquished their professional status last year after declaring bankruptcy and were thus relegated all the way down to Championnat National 2, the fourth tier.
Well, the 6-foot veteran might not be playing at the highest level but his love for the game is very much intact – and so too is his impact on the field for an outfit looking for a resurgence.
Earning around £3k per week, Carroll remarked “it’s costing me money” to play for Les Girondins but that he wants to be a part of the club’s history.
“To be honest, it’s even costing me money to come and play for Bordeaux but I’m playing football and I am simply happy to be playing football. I want to be a part of this club’s history and to be frank, it wasn’t a question of money. In my career, it’s never been a question of money.”
He’s doing alright too. Indeed, Carroll has posted eight goals and an assist across 11 fixtures for his current club in the league this season, which, ironically, is more than Nunez has bagged for Liverpool in 2024/25 – four goals from 22 Premier League appearances.
One Spanish journalist has even hailed the former Liverpool flop as being “unstoppable” in France this season.
There’s no way around viewing Carroll’s time on Merseyside without a shake of the head, but he’s enjoying a happy ending to his career. With Nunez heading for the exit this summer, let’s hope he too can forge a successful career elsewhere.
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