Stan Collymore reflects on what it was like to break the British transfer record in 1995 and offers advice to Alexander Isak after Liverpool’s £125m move for the striker.
There are only a select few footballers who truly understand what Alexander Isak is experiencing right now.
When Liverpool completed their £125 million deal for the Swedish striker on deadline day, breaking the British transfer record in the process, it marked another milestone in the Premier League’s era of financial excess.
It’s a world away from the football landscape of 1995, but in some ways, the emotions will be familiar to Stan Collymore.
Nearly 30 years ago, Collymore was that man the most expensive footballer in British history after Liverpool paid Nottingham Forest £8.5 million for his services. In today’s money, that fee would be astronomical.
“I think that the difference between breaking the transfer record as I did 30 years ago and now is that it’s hard to adjust for inflation and work out how similar the deals were,” Collymore tells The Athletic.
“Kieran Maguire worked out that an inflation-adjusted figure for all the transfers has Alan Shearer at £250m to Newcastle, and my move to Liverpool was maybe £216m, so my transfer fee was really a massive outlier back then in a way that Isak’s isn’t.”
Back then, the Premier League was still in its infancy. The Sky Sports revolution was just taking hold. Roy Evans’ Liverpool were chasing Manchester United’s growing dominance, and transfer records were being smashed in leaps rather than increments.
“At the time, I was breaking the £7m record for Andy Cole to Manchester United from the season before, and maybe Roy Keane before that from Forest to United,” Collymore recalls.
“So, while there are incremental jumps these days, back then the increases were more like leaps the equivalent of going from £150m to £300m within the course of a season or two.”
Collymore’s start at Anfield was electric. His debut season yielded a thrilling 55-goal partnership with Robbie Fowler — one of the most exciting attacking duos the club had seen in years. Hopes soared that Liverpool could finally end their wait for a league title. But despite adding a further 47 goals between them the following campaign, Evans’ side finished a place lower in the table, and with Michael Owen emerging from the academy, Collymore’s time at the club came to an end.
Fast forward three decades and the circumstances are very different. Isak isn’t being asked to lift Liverpool out of a trophy drought he’s joining a squad fresh off a Premier League title, still boasting the core of players who won every major honour under Jürgen Klopp.
And crucially, as Collymore points out, the noise around transfer fees has changed.
“Now though I don’t think it (the size of the transfer fee) matters,” he says. “Players are asked less often about their fees in press conferences and at games. Managers don’t get asked much about it either the focus is more on whether the player is settling in.
“That is because we’re used to such astronomical riches in the Premier League. Those high fees are omnipresent. Look at the top 20 in the Premier League they’ve all spent big. Birmingham dropped £10m on Jay Stansfield when they were in the third tier. Big fees are just par for the course in England.”
Still, Liverpool’s willingness to shatter the British transfer record underlines both their ambition and their belief that Isak can be the focal point of a new attacking era at Anfield.
“All Isak really needs to do is to get fit,” says Collymore. “That’s the primary thing. And he needs to hit the ground running because if he hits the ground running, Liverpool fans will forget about all the shenanigans with Newcastle.
“It’s going to be about four to six weeks down the line when we’ll know how it’s going for Isak at Liverpool. He’ll be fit and ready to go. Hopefully he’ll have had three or four goals under his belt at that stage, and we will be talking about football.”
For Collymore, the contrast between his experience and Isak’s is as much cultural as it is financial.
“It’s lucky for players now,” he reflects. “They can just blend into the great amounts of spending from all the clubs. There are so many financial juggernauts in the Premier League that the fees are just baked in.
“It wasn’t like that for me at Liverpool.”
In 1995, Collymore was a headline. In 2025, Isak is part of an ecosystem where nine-figure transfers barely raise an eyebrow. Yet for both, the challenge remains the same to live up to the weight of expectation that comes with wearing Liverpool red.
