Looking at every Liverpool January signing since 2003

Luis Suarez  – 2011 (Ajax)

Suárez was signed for £22.8 million from Ajax for Liverpool’s most expensive signing ever – for a few hours until Andy Carroll was signed later the same day. At the time, Suárez was regarded as the much lower profile deal of the day, with the Uruguayan striker being brought in more to assist Carroll in replacing Fernando Torres rather than being the replacement himself. Little did they know what would come.

Suárez came out swinging for the Reds, scoring his first goal for the club in front of the Kop shortly after being subbed on for his Premier League debut. Things only escalated from there as he quickly established his footing in Dalglish’s squad, netting four goals and five assists in his first half-season and helping the Reds move from 12th in the league in mid-January to finish in sixth.

The striker remained at the club until 2014 when he signed with Barcelona for a massive 65 million. Despite continuing behavioral issues throughout, Suárez was a production machine for the Reds, leaving Merseyside with 47 goals in 133 appearances, trailing only Mohammed Salah in the club’s history in goals per match (0.62).

Though in terms of trophies he left with just that League Cup win like Carroll, Suárez goes down as one of the club’s best ever January signings instead of one of the biggest flops.

Andy Carroll  – 2011 (Newcastle)

Liverpool paid Newcastle United a massive £35 million for Carroll, a record bid at the time for an English footballer (now 11th all-time). That price tag, even by today’s standards, represents the extremely high expectations for the 21-year-old striker who was slotted to fill the shoes of Kop hero Torres, who had just been sold to Chelsea for a whopping £50 million.

Carroll arrived on Merseyside battling an injury that would sideline him from taking the pitch for the Reds until March of that year. By then, Kenny Daglish’s strategies and systems had already settled into place without him, and he never could figure out how to work within that system. Carroll managed just 11 goals and six assists across his 58 appearances for the club. With just a 2012 League Cup win to his name, the striker was sent out to West Ham on loan in 2012 before being sold to London club the following year for less than half of what Liverpool had paid just a few years earlier.

Since then, Carroll has expressed regret for how his time on Merseyside went, telling The Athletic, “the way I’d played at Newcastle — that was how I wanted to play. But Liverpool was completely different. I should have embraced their ideas, what they wanted. Thinking back, I really didn’t appreciate what I had and what I could have achieved.”

What might have been – maybe he could have had some more brilliant moments like his late header against Everton at Wembley to send Liverpool to the FA Cup final.

Danny Ward – 2012 (Wrexham)

Liverpool picked up 19-year-old Welsh keeper Danny Ward from Wrexham for a fee estimated around £100,000. He did not see much playtime for the first-team and did not make his full Premier League debut until April 2016, minding the net against Bournemouth to allow Simon Mignolet to rest. After that, Ward only appeared in one other league game that season before being loaned out for the majority of the rest of his time at the club.

In the summer of 2018, Ward signed with Leicester City for a fee of £12.5 million.