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Liverpool is set to start the 2025/26 season with the Community Shield against Crystal Palace, the 2025 FA Cup champions who upset Manchester City 1-0 in the final.
Outside of finalizing a move for one last attacker — seemingly Alexander Isak from Newcastle — and some center-back cover, the Reds have likely finished their summer business.
Ahead of Sunday's clash — a game where Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker will likely return — Palace manager Oliver Glasner said "you can clearly see a club's ambitions in the transfer market. And it seems that Liverpool FC isn’t satisfied with just winning the English league; I think they want to win the Champions League."
Meanwhile, his Eagles have spent more time trying to win an appeal wth UEFA to reclaim their spot in the 2025/26 Europa League taken from them due to joint ownership issues with Olympique Lyon. At the time of writing, Palace is set to the play in the Conference League.
Who has Liverpool signed? The Reds took two players from Bayer Leverkusen in midfielder Florian Wirtz (€125.00m, $156 million) and wing-back Jeremie Frimpong (€40 million, $46.5 million).
Liverpool secured striker Hugo Ekitike from Eintracht Frankfurt for €95 million ($110 million) and left-back Milos Kerkez from Bournemouth for €46.9 million ($55 million). Even reserve goalkeeper Armin Pesci was drafted from Paskas AFC for €1.8 million ($2 million).
“They’ve been playing at this level for years, so I have to say I was a bit surprised that they were so active, but of course it also shows their ambitions," Glasner added. "They obviously saw that we needed to add one or two things to the squad, and they made that very clear and explicit early on this summer.”
His Palace side has been far more tepid in the market, having only inked fullback Borna Sosa from Ajax (for a bargin fee) and goalkeeper Walter Benetiz from PSV (free transfer).
Glasner joined the Eagles in the second half of the 2024 season and boasts an impressive 45.54% win percentage with the club across 61 matches. In addition to leading Palace to their first trophy, the club's 53 points last season were their most ever in a Premier League season.
Glasner has been successful wherever he's gone. He was named both director of sport and manager at LASK while they played in the Austrian second tier and had them second in the first division within a few seasons. He led German powerhouse Wolfsburg to the Champions League in 2021 for the first time in a decade and then won the Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt a season later.
Glasner also weighed in on the 2025/26 title race. “Four or five clubs have invested heavily again. If I take City, over €300 million in 2025, Liverpool similarly, I think Arsenal not far behind, Chelsea exactly the same, so you can see that they want to win the Premier League, they want to win the Champions League," he said.
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