Yeah, I suppose. But if every time a player gets injured or loses form you have to change shape or move players into positions they aren’t familiar with, eventually that will catch up with you. It’s also hard to change the shape with no training time to prep it.
I don’t want to be woe is us about it, but Arsenal aren’t changing their shape every time they get an injury. They just roll on a player who is just as good as the one they’ve rolled off.
edit.
do you honestly think im advocating changing our shape everytime the wind changes direction?
Is FSG ready to bank a loss of revenue for the FY26/27?
Owners thought we were settling in comfortably into a period of league dominance and then the wheels fell off
Okay, you can’t fucking complain about squad depth after selling off 6-7 decent squad players (hint: all of them are better than Chiesa and Nyoni when they left) and a core player (Diaz) to buy a few superstars.
Could have bought 1-2 wingers, or 1 winger AND 1 CB with the Isak money.
Another very easy choice was to increase Diaz’s wage to match Gakpo’s previous wage to keep him, and not increasing Gakpo’s wage to 250k per week because frankly he never deserves that - I mean, Gakpo earning more than Henderson or Mane is pure madness. For a player like Diaz, 55k per week is downright horrible.
We are going in circles here. As it has been said time and time again, Slot is also culpable for the perceived lack of depth. No one forced him to get rid off Elliott and Quansah. He was the one that couldn’t find any use for either of them even when we were strolling to victories and had the league all but wrapped up. And in any case, it’s not as bad as you’d have everyone believe. He still has established players at his disposal. The fact of the matter is that he doesn’t trust anyone but his first choice players and this has always been the case, whether we had injuries or not.
As to the matter in question, Hughes should absolutely be under scrutiny himself. For one thing, Slot’s off the cuff comment about Hughes not pushing for his signings to be starting didn’t feel right. It shouldn’t be Hughes’ signings, it should their signings collectively. That comment for me hints at some disconnect between the two of them. As for the signings themselves, whereas their quality isn’t under any doubt, their suitability for the team and its style of play most certainly is. There was a conscious decision to move away from what worked so well and delivered a league title and so far it has been a spectacular backfire.
Surely, at the end of the season Hughes himself will have some explaining to do.
Diaz (enough said)
Quansah (could have been used as well)
Elliott (almost pushed Szobo and Jones to the bench towards the end of Klopp’s last season, could have been used at the midfield if Szobo has to play at RB)
Morton (certainly much more ready than Baijetic who is permanently injured, Nyoni and McConnell, his current performances at Lyon say it all, also a proper defensive midfielder)
Nunez (I’d gladly play him over Chiesa)
Kelleher (well, he could have very likely pushed Allison to the bench had he stayed)
All of those guys above can contribute a lot more than say, Chiesa, had they stayed.
We don’t even really know how Slot actually treated TAA behind the scenes the whole time.
I am really tempted to use the r-word to describe the decision to sell Morton and keep Baijetic.
A tragicomic season + most likely no UCL football for the next one. Apart from that, all good.
No you can’t, but unless Slot is the one telling Hughes he doesn’t want a bench and he’ll make do with 14 players, then it isn’t fair to pin it solely on him.
I’m pulling up this one because it’s a classic example of hindsight thinking.
Morton is a good player, and I always rated him. But his career was going nowhere here. I’m happy he is doing really well at Lyon, but that does not mean it was wrong to move him on.
He is benefiting from the week in week out football that young players need, and he was never getting here.
You can’t say that Morton would’ve done really well for us dropped in for the odd game because look how how well he’s doing at Lyon playing every week. That’s nonsense.
At the same time at the end of last season, had the club said we’re selling Gravenberch or Mac Allister and going with Morton as DM you’d have been the first one to shit the bed.
We already did that with the left-wing by selling off Diaz with no replacement, and we are paying dearly for that now.
I don’t think the appraisal for Hughes will be particularly brilliant and Slot was definitely left with a squad that had glaring problems. My issue is twofold: recruitment and coaching.
For me, the recruitment issues don’t excuse the way the team is being coached.
For much of this season (the last 12 months in fact) we’ve just been so easy to play through. Not enough protection is being given to the back four and that starts from the front.
We’ve lost pressing monsters in Jota and Diaz and haven’t replaced them (recruitment). We’ve also practically abandoned control of the centre of the pitch (coaching).
We look better without Salah. Gakpo has serious issues with decision-making. Even if available Isak doesn’t provide any solutions here. His purchase was a totally unnecessary flex.
Our best pressers from the front are Wirtz, Ekitike, and Szoboszlai but how often are those 3 the furthest forward?
Behind them ought to be Jones, Mac Allister, and Gravenberch but Jones is routinely squeezed out for Gakpo.
We then cover our injury hit RB position by sacrificing Szoboszlai rather than giving a chance to a dedicated right back which weakens us twice over.
Hughes isn’t responsible for that.
Gakpo was on £120k a week prior to the recent renewal - https://www.thisisanfield.com/2025/08/cody-gakpo-signs-new-long-term-contract-at-liverpool/
Diaz was on £140k a week not £55k - https://www.thisisanfield.com/2025/07/liverpool-made-two-attempts-to-extend-luis-diazs-contract/
People will mention Edwards but he is totally removed from this in my view, he is ultimately the Billy Hogan in this situation, long term. I did find it interesting that Hughes said he and Slot are the here and now and not long term like Billy. As I would expect as a sporting director there would be more long term vision in that, so maybe he knows the pressure he is under here.
Personally the two mistakes are not seeking a replacement in like for Diaz and the whole central defence scenario. I have no issue in going for Wirtz, I am less convinced of Isak to be honest.
I’ve been listening to the “Rest Is Science” podcast and there was a segment about Ian Graham, our former stats guy:
I thought this was quite relevant because Hannah Fry mentions that other clubs (e.g. Brighton) are now using the same strategy. She mentions Joel Matip as an example of a player that we signed cheaply based on data analysis.
When we were the only club doing this, we had a big advantage in that we could pick up on good players that others had missed. Now everyone is doing that, we are rather stuck with having to fork out for the best players or coaching our way around it.
I’m not actually sure what FSG’s approach is now. We have a much higher income and better facilities than we did in the mid 2010s. However, I feel that they are not concentrating on the small details and not getting the best out of our players.
I think other clubs have been using similar approaches to us for just as long, if not longer, Brentford for example were doing it back when they were in the lower divisions. Brighton’s owner has his own analytical business I think. It’s probably true that some of the other bigger clubs are using it more frequently now or are much better at doing so than they were in the past though.
I think we have had problems with staffing turnover which caused us some issues, and we’re seeing issues with getting players to sign new contracts which is proving disruptive.
I think it is similar to what it has always been. If the funds had been available earlier in FSG’s tenure, I’m sure we would have been open to signing the then equivalent to Wirtz and Isak.
Now though, it looks like we are also moving earlier to get players both in terms of age and number of games they have played. As @Limiescouse pointed out in the past we would look to use a longer dataset before signing players (100 games?). An article in the Athletic recently highlighted that the average age of our signings last summer was less than the equivalent ages when Klopp was building his side.
Yeah - back in the day when we seemed to be signing half Southampton’s team every year, a lot of people would sarcastically suggest we cut out the middle man and just sign their analysts.
This is probably a good example. It was known that Edwards had looked at Mane before his move to Southampton and had considered whether or not try to sign him. It’s possible our approach with the current squad would be to make that signing now, rather than wait until we see him in action for Southampton first. Although, perhaps that is more a reflection on the current squad’s potential gaps than a shift in recruiting.
And we would still need someone else other than Ekitike to play up top because Diaz was not only a LW last season, we played the best stuff with an attacking trio of Salah, Gakpo and Diaz up top.
Only signing a LW (or two wingers, questionable whether one of them could play up top) to replace Diaz and going into the season with only Ekitike as a proper striker (at the time we have no idea how well he might do) just wouldn’t be enough. It would’ve been criticized at the time by most, I’m pretty sure.
It’s absolutely up for good discussion what were our moves, did it have to be both Ekitike and Isak for the money we brought them for and tactical questions how will that work and our depth/competition in wide areas.
On Morton (we’re really going to the periphery of things to find reasons and explanations…), the best he could hope was possibly to become our 4th choice CM on paper instead of Endo and then try to prove himself for more. These players were here for a while, some of them under two coaches and even if top professionals make mistakes, I’d say there are good reasons for most situations in football. Morton needed minutes and badly. Going elsewhere was probably the most logical move from all angles. We’ll see how his development and future goes.