Agreed, the style of football may not be the greatest, but the coaches are very adept in setting up their respective teams and can get players in both terms of quality, speed and physicality.
Regarding the style, the coaches have gone from, what worked in the championship, aka Southampton under Russel Martin, trying to play it out from the back and not realising the step up in the quality of the opposition, to now playing percentage football.
https://www.thisisanfield.com/2026/04/michael-edwards-richard-hughes-leaving-liverpool-update-2026/
Definitely does not pass the smell test. It’s transparent spin and Sam Wallace should know better than to report something like that as if it’s accurate.
I can believe Edwards might want to leave, especially as he returned with the plan to oversee a multi-club model and it appears that FSG have shelved those plans for the time being. But I highly doubt he came here with only the plan to stay three years. Establishing a multi-club system would have taken longer than that even if FSG hadn’t shelved it.
And there’s zero chance Richard Hughes came to one of the biggest clubs in world football - likely the biggest job he’ll ever have - with the plan only to stay for three years and no longer. He’s upset that he’s not getting offered an extension and trying to save face.
I commented on something strange that was said in the round table they did a month or so ago. Typically you view managers and people in Hughes’ role as being judged on different timelines. You take someone like Wirtz Slot’s responsibility is to get him purring as soon as possible and Hughes is judged on whether he brought value over the length of his contract. Yet in that rounds table they commented on how they were both judged on the short term results. It was a strange comment, but maybe does line up with having only a short term contract he didnt expect to renew.
Why you would hire someone in a strategic role like that and expect them to be out quicker than most of the players he brings to the club is another question
Tbf, fixed term contracts are the norm and 3 years is relatively short for a manager but pretty standard for a sporting director new to the club with a relatively short cv. If Edwards is also on a 3 year deal that’s probably just coincidence. 3 years is certainly enough time for both parties to see if there are legs to a multi club project. It feels just about right to me.
This is more about the reported expectation of not staying beyond the terms of the original contract.
Yeah, I get that but I imagine it’s just being circumspect
Must be the lack of sleep…I thought I read “Yeah, I get that but I imagine it’s just being circumcised”
If you’re circumcised you’re definitely cut short.
From FSG’s perspective, sure, I get why they’d only give out three year deals to Slot and Hughes. I definitely don’t think Slot or Hughes would have turned down longer deals or extensions. Worst case scenario, they get sacked and FSG has to pay out the rest of their deals. There’s very little incentive to take a shorter deal for either of them, and I certainly do not think that they were only committed to three years no matter what.
In Hughes’s case, especially, it makes little sense to appoint a SD who is only committed to a three years and no longer, especially when your first year saw little in terms of squad building. That just doesn’t make sense and comes off as spin from Hughes trying to save his reputation in light of the fact that FSG haven’t extended him.
Edwards is different, because he was a known quantity that FSG worked hard to bring back. I’m guessing that they would have given Edwards a much longer contract if he was willing to stay long term. But Edwards probably only wanted a shorter deal to see if the multi club project had legs.
I saw that and it didn’t come off as implausible to me. Of course, I agree that their charges are different in terms of short term performance (Slot) versus long term squad building and vision (Hughes), but the reality is that they were both unknown quantities coming into the club, and if things looked like they were headed towards a cliff, neither had the cachet to survive it. But that’s more of a product of FSG’s expectations - I don’t think Hughes came here with the idea that if all went well, he’d still leave after three years.
Notably, I’ve seen plenty of “reporting” about how FSG want to back Slot (which I take with a grain of salt, for reasons I’ve previously explained), but I’ve seen none indicating the same with respect to Hughes.