Liverpool have made Hugo Ekitike their most expensive striker of all-time but history shows a costly No.9 at Anfield does not always work out.
With the likes of Mo Salah and Sadio Mane scoring buckets, the centre forward spot at Liverpool has been a difficult one to operate in of late.
Roberto Firmino was the perfect blend of playmaker and finisher but before him, Liverpool really struggled to find a player who could fit in.
Here then are six big signings the club made but ultimately turned out to be bad purchases
Andy Carroll
On January 31 2011, Liverpool made two signings – Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll and yet it was the latter that was headline news.
The Geordie forward had just fired Newcastle back to the top flight and had found it easy to make the transition to the top division.
His first Premier League goals came via a hat-trick against Villa and come the winter period, the pony-tailed No.9 was on 11 goals, prompting Liverpool to swoop in.
Under Kenny Dalglish, the Reds fronted up £35 million for Carroll (Man City would pay that same amount for Sergio Aguero just a few months later) but the money soon began to feel wasted.
A thigh injury kept him out until March but Carroll then went on a run of three games without a goal. By the end of the season, he had scored in just one game.
The following season saw little improvement. Liverpool won the League Cup thanks to a Carroll goal in the final but in the league, he found the next four times in 35 games.
By August 2012, just a year and a half after they bought him, Liverpool cut their losses and sent him on loan to West Ham. He would move to Upton Park permanently the following season, handing Liverpool a £20million loss.
Christian Benteke
Carroll wasn’t the only tall No.9 to find life tough at Anfield as a few years later, Christian Benteke would be in the same boat.
Having come close to the title in 2015, Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool were licking their wounds after an underwhelming following campaign and with the axe potentially waiting to fall on the manager, he opted to bring in something different up top.
The Anfield side paid Benteke’s £32.5million release clause, making him their then-second most expensive signing, but injuries and a lack of goals led to a poor season.
Rodgers’ sacking in October did Benteke no favours with Jurgen Klopp arriving and quickly deciding the Belgian was not for him. Just a year after they signed him, Liverpool sold Bentke to Palace.
Darwin Nunez
Considering he is still at the club, there is time for a Darwin Nunez redemption but the arrival of Ekitike does not bode well for the Uruguayan’s future.
The 26-year-old can be equally fun and frustrating to watch, regardless of whether you are a Liverpool fan or not, but inconsistency is not something you pay €75million for.
To date, he has scored 40 goals in 143 games but you get the sense it is now or never for Nunez’s Liverpool career.
Mario Balotelli
Such is the ego of football managers that they can often believe they can change a player when no one else can. Brendan Rodgers was not the first to think this about Mario Balotelli but he, like every other, quickly found it to be a lost cause.
With Luis Suarez off to Barcelona, Balotelli was signed as a replacement but soon put himself in the manager’s bad books.
In a match against Madrid, Rodgers criticised Balotelli for swapping shirts with Pepe at half time and in December, the Italian was suspended for posting images with anti-Semitic and racist references on social media.
It took until February for him to score his first goal and come the end of the year, that tally had only increased to four.
Liverpool decided to get rid of the troublesome forward and sent him on loan to Milan in the summer of 2015.
Robbie Keane
Liverpool’s interest in Robbie Keane resulted in a complaint from Tottenham to the Premier League but if the Anfield side had known how the move would have turned out, they would not have bothered.
Keane scored his first Liverpool goal in October but would then go six weeks without scoring again.
Having failed to nail down a first-team spot, Spurs submitted a £12million bid in January for the Irishman and he moved back to White Hart Lane after just half a year with the Reds, who took a £7million loss.
Can you name every Liverpool manager’s most expensive signing since 1992?
Danny Ings
Danny Ings can be given a little more slack as he only cost £6.5million but after an excellent career at Burnley, much more was expected from the striker.
There was the hope that he could transfer the goalscoring form that had seen him net 43 in 140 for the Clarets but injuries and better options met his playing time for Liverpool was increasingly limited.
An 11-month spell on the sidelines came to an end in September 2017 but he left for Southampton in 2018.
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