Liverpool had the highest wage bill in the Premier League when winning their 20th league title last season, the club’s latest set of accounts show.
Liverpool’s wage bill increased by £42m to £428m in the year ending 31 May 2025, when a Premier League title triumph in Arne Slot’s debut season as head coach and a return to the Champions League increased revenue to a record £703m. The club’s wages-to-revenue ratio stood at a healthy 61%. It was the biggest wage bill in the division, ahead of Manchester City on £408m, and included bonuses for the record-equalling title triumph.
Commercial revenue increased by £15m to £323m and matchday revenue by £14m to £116m. The figures contributed to an increase of £89m in revenue for the highest-ranked Premier League club in the Deloitte Football Money League. But the rise in wages, which pushed administrative costs up by £57m to £657m, resulted in a relatively modest post-tax profit of £8m. Liverpool had a £57m loss in 2023-24 after failing to qualify for the Champions League.
“We make no secret of our desire to run and operate a financially sustainable club, to grow revenue streams, and to do all we can off the pitch to help bring more success on it,” said Liverpool’s chief financial officer, Jenny Beacham. “The 2024-25 season is a great example of how this can work, with record revenues alongside the men’s team winning our 20th league title.
“The club does face significant cost challenges, including rises in administrative, staffing and operational costs, alongside the need for us to compete at the highest level of the game, across our men and women’s teams.”
Liverpool’s latest set of published accounts do not include last summer’s record spend of almost £450m on new players, including the British record signing of Alexander Isak for £125m from Newcastle. Slot said recently that failure to qualify for the Champions League would be unacceptable for Liverpool this season and the competition “does have an enormous impact on the way this club is run”.
On Friday Slot said it was not difficult to resist the clamour to start Rio Ngumoha because the level-headed teenager had not been carried away by the hype. The 17-year-old made a huge contribution to Liverpool’s late win at Nottingham Forest last weekend after his 77th-minute introduction, especially after switching wings to replace Mohamed Salah on the right. That has prompted calls for Ngumoha to start against West Ham on Saturday, when Florian Wirtz will again be absent through injury, but Slot will continue to develop the youngster carefully.
“It’s totally not difficult because of how he is,” Slot said of putting Ngumoha on the bench. “And that is something special for a 17-year-old who has been hyped like he is throughout his whole career.
“There has been a lot of talk about him because we can all see how special he is and his talent. He is handling that situation really well, which is a big compliment to him but also to his parents, who raised him that he is down to earth, works really hard, keeps going and doesn’t lose his head because a few pundits have given positive feedback about his game. If you start believing how special you are after a few comments from pundits, that is probably not the way to become the player he wants to become.
“We have to keep his special quality and that is beating players in one v one. That is not 10 out of 10 times working, and it doesn’t have to be, but he has to keep trying. There are not many players in modern football that can take on one-v-ones on a regular basis and beat their opponents a lot of times. That is a special quality and that is why we want to take such good care of him because we have a lot of belief in how special he is.”
Salah has scored only four league goals this season, seven in total, and Slot admits the combined output from his main forward line “is not enough”. Hugo Ekitiké has 10 league goals, 15 in all competitions, and Cody Gakpo five in the Premier League.
“It’s not down to chance creation because from open play, at least when I last saw the stats, we have created the most chances,” Slot said. “What it might be is that usually when you are 1-0 or 2-0 up, the other team does not believe as much any more or they open up and attackers can score a third or fourth goal. We haven’t had many of those games this season.
“It’s always been tight, tight, tight, or us chasing games and the other team fighting every single second. For Mo, he is also unfortunate that we have been unlucky when it comes to penalties this season. We have only had two or three and have a negative balance on penalties. That is the way we scored a lot of goals last season.”
