As Richard Hughes departs his role as Liverpool’s sporting director, the club’s next appointment will need more than big moves to be a success…
HE came. He saw. He’s handsome.
Whether he conquered or not, though, may not be decided till he’s long settled into his new home in Saudi Arabia.
When Richard Hughes first sat down alongside Arne Slot to address the world’s media, we wondered if it would be the beautiful beginning of a sea change at Anfield.
A sporting director and head coach announced in tandem, with the club taking a seemingly deliberate step away from having an all-encompassing leader like Jürgen Klopp.
The problem is, among many, it never really started like that with our big German manager either. At first it was the transfer committee, of course, but that quite quickly disbanded as Ian Ayre rode his Harley-Davidson into the sunset and Michael Edwards assumed direct responsibility in the role.
While that bred success for several years, like any flexible workplace with progression and people who want to better themselves, Klopp and Edwards both increased in importance and therefore responsibilities to the point that their roles almost began to blur into one another – at least on the business side of things, obviously.
Edwards left. Then Klopp did. Then Edwards came back with the aforementioned head coach and sporting directors effectively underneath him, though his remit was to help launch Liverpool into a multi-club ownership model.
Fortunately, from the point of view of sporting competition and its integrity, Edwards failed that remit. Hughes’ and Slot’s relative failures are a little less cut-and-dried.
Slot won a Premier League. Hughes made *some* “big moves”. Yet, just 26 months later, both have now departed under a weight of criticism.
Both can feel like they let the other down to varying degrees, but our former Dutch head coach has a stronger case in the eyes of most.
Because for all of the high-profile signings made under Hughes’s transfer stewardship, The Reds have arguably always needed more squad players.
That should be the remit for the next fella to take that job, if it is indeed Liverpool’s intention to hire another.
Hughes’s much-anticipated departure has ended up feeling a bit like a backdoor exit, luckily overshadowed by Andoni Iraola’s first competitive victory as manager in Ipswich on Friday.
It was a victory led by goals from record signing Alexander Isak, but propped up by the brilliance of the likes of Ronald Araujo and Victor Munoz.
I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that the 55 million euro option to buy in our latest Uruguayan’s loan terms is already starting to represent something of a steal, while Munoz’s 40 million euro fee could go down as one of the coups of the summer across the league.
Both represent the kind of business some fans wished Hughes would have pushed for more of – players brought in for fees at about the going rate for squad players these days.
That’s not to turn our collective noses up at the big-money buys, and you only have to look at the away end’s excitement about Bradley Barcola’s introduction on Friday night for proof of that, but more to say that those piano players still need teammates capable of carrying the piano.
Maybe that wasn’t the remit handed down from FSG to Hughes. Maybe the mere signing of the nine-figure fellas, regardless of their varying degrees of success so far, means he delivered in their eyes. I’m sure it’s what has helped him get a move to the big-money Saudi League.
That may even be all that Hughes cares about now.
After that first press conference, his only other fan-facing interaction was a poorly aged piece of club YouTube channel content that was arguably released to represent unity among a management structure that sacked its head coach just a few months later. It’s likely that he doesn’t believe the fans at Anfield represent a jury whose verdict he values.
It would be nice to live in a world where the next fella did value fan sentiment. And hopefully the popularity of Araujo and Munoz provides both a blueprint for squad building, as well as fuel for a more cut-and-dried Sporting Director success story next time around.
Iraola may be wishing he could clone that kind of player at some point, for all of his recent declarations of happiness with the transfer policy of chasing the best players in each position.
Football is a squad game, and Liverpool need the best of both worlds to be successful.
Until then, I’ll be living in the best of both Big Ron and Little Vic’s worlds.
