Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version or go back to LFC Live.net

(Image: Nick Taylor/Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Liverpool remain on course to be crowned Premier League champions come the end of this season.

And when, as is highly likely, they lift the Premier League trophy aloft they will be worthy champions, while no other team has come remotely close to touching them this season on the domestic front.

Article continues below

Under the ownership of Fenway Sports Group (FSG), Liverpool's approach to the transfer market has been both lauded and lambasted, with some of the criticism based on the club having missed opportunities to add to their squad at key times when they were in the ascendancy.

However, as the Reds close in on the title, and having been dominant in the group stages of the new Champions League format only to see their only real wobble come at a time of high stakes in the second leg of the last-16 tie against Paris Saint-Germain that cost them dearly, it is a transfer strategy that has them well placed.

READ MORE:Exclusive: Why Liverpool chose Asia for pre-season this summer and what is in store for US plansREAD MORE:Exclusive: Inside Liverpool £308m success and ambition to be world's best

On Monday, the Premier League, in the interests of transparency, published the figures of all the Premier League, EFL and National League teams that spent money on player's agents.

The usual suspects were among the biggest spenders on intermediary fees - including Chelsea (£60.4million), Manchester City (£52.1million) and Manchester United (£33million) - while Liverpool were the seventh highest in the Premier League for 2024/25 at £20.8million.

Some clubs add more extensively than others, in any given season, but to look back over the past three years and how much has been shelled out on money drifting out of the game to intermediaries shows that the Reds' strategy has delivered over and above what some of their rivals have been able to achieve.

Since 2022/23, Liverpool have spent £86million on agents' fees.

That places them fourth on the Premier League list, with Chelsea having spent a staggering £178.7million over the same period without having even managed to qualify for the Champions League on a single occasion.

Manchester City, who have delivered on the pitch up until this season, have spent £164.3million, while woefully underachieving Manchester United have spent £118.7million over the three years.

That has been the case for some time.

But with the Premier League's financial controls to change in these next couple of years, moving from the current profit and sustainability rules (PSR) to a squad cost ratio - something more in line with what UEFA currently has as financial regulation - then what clubs pay to agents will be of greater significance.

The squad cost ratio rule, if applied in the same way as UEFA's current rules, would be calculated by combining the wages of players and head coaches, player amortisation and impairment charges, termination payments for players and head coaches and agents' fees and cost of other intermediaries.

But for clubs like Chelsea, heavy spenders with far smaller revenues - much like Manchester United - then spending some 108 per cent more than Liverpool, who are set up for success, means they will likely continue to have to find ways to generate paper profits or player trade as effectively as they have done for some years in order to ensure compliance, and that might be more challenging than it has been moving forward if they don't get back to the Champions League soon.


For more news relating to Chelsea, visit our sister site Chelsea Latest Live.