How Liverpool just made OVER £63M without losing a SINGLE first-team star

Thanks to some shrewd operating towards the end of the transfer window, new Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes has turned a profit.

Until the last two weeks of August, it was looking like Hughes’ first summer in charge of sporting operations was going to be a big embarrassment for the former Bournemouth man, but thankfully he has redressed this to a degree as we look at the window with the benefit of hindsight.

In terms of the money spent, the headline deal was very obviously the absolute bargain that was Federico Chiesa at £12.5m, a ludicrously low fee for a player of such reputation.

Whilst it is not expected that the Italian will feature for head coach Arne Slot until after September’s international break, his signing has brought a feel-good factor around transfers that was sorely needed.

The only other incoming was Georgian goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili for an estimated £29m, and that’s a deal that whilst done now is in fact for next summer. It’s not entirely clear whether Liverpool will look to options like player amortisation to balance their accounting sheets and whether they count that as money spent this year or next year. For now, we’ll count it as this year.

Read more: Liverpool loan players: EVERY Red who secured a move this summer

Outgoings for the Reds were the far more active side of their transfer business this summer. Big profits were netted on the sales of Fabio Carvalho for £27.5m and Sepp van den Berg for £25m, both to Brentford. 

Slightly less of an earning but a healthy fee nonetheless was Bobby Clark to RB Salzburg for £10m, and the headline loan move of Stefan Bajcetic to the same club scored a loan fee, which has not been made public.

Other undisclosed fees were received for defenders Billy Koumetio and Anderson Arroyo, and Harvey Blair left for £300k to newly-promoted Championship side Portsmouth. 

All of these deals mean that Liverpool have made at least £63m this summer, and even when subtracting the money spent on Chiesa and Mamardashvili, there would be a profit of at least £21.5m.