£85m for Cody Gakpo is a serious offer. If Andoni Iraola genuinely believes Bradley Barcola plus a different profile on the right, whether that is Sarr, Minteh, Fernandez-Pardo (yet another left-sided player) or somebody else, gives Liverpool the attack he wants, then the manager deserves our backing.
The problem is Richard Hughes has done almost nothing this summer to earn the benefit of the doubt.
Liverpool have 3 days to replace Gakpo when it’s taken most of the window to address an attack already lacking depth. Szoboszlai finished our first home game at right-back (it may actually be his position, gulp). Ekitike is unavailable. Isak cannot be expected to carry the centre-forward position alone. There are holes everywhere, square pegs filling them, and around ten senior players heading towards the final year of their contracts.
That’s incompetence. That’s neglect.
I went early on Hughes after the Diomande debacle and took plenty of criticism for it. I wish I had been wrong. Instead, every week seems to bring another example of a sporting director operating without a convincing plan, reacting late, shopping beneath the required level, and leaving the manager to make sense of a squad assembled without proper balance.
If Hughes were not seemingly edging towards Saudi Arabia, the calls for his dismissal would already be deafening.
FSG deserve their share of this too. They appointed him, empowered him, and have allowed Liverpool to drift through a summer where the manager appears to be accepting whatever is available from a late trolley dash.
None of this is the players’ fault. I also struggle to believe this is the happy transition some keep portraying. How could it be with this much uncertainty?
I want to enjoy Liverpool. I want Iraola to succeed. I want to be proved spectacularly wrong.
Yet Champions League qualification currently feels like the ceiling, two games into a new era.
Liverpool are too big for Richard Hughes, too big for second and third choices, and increasingly too big for an ownership model whose sell by date has passed.
I hope this time next year serious people are running the football operation.
We won’t be troubling Arsenal or City this season that’s for sure. We missed the chance for dominance when we didn’t back Klopp at his peak. Allowing players to leave on a free along with non identification of replacements seems to me negligent, at best. As astute as FSG have been, they’ve been sleeping on this one. Looks like they’re going to cash in on their investment sometime very soon and it’ll be over to the new administration to invest their money instead of FSG’s.
We’re the 4th biggest club on earth and we act like we’re fu**ing Charlton.