{"id":792934,"date":"2026-10-05T18:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T18:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/792934\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T18:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T18:54:15","slug":"liverpool-hughes-laughing-with-reds-ace-projected-to-be-better-than-man-city-counterpart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/792934\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool: Hughes laughing with Reds ace projected to be better than Man City counterpart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool<\/a> and their former sporting director, Richard Hughes, will have the last laugh with a new Reds signing projected to become a superior player to his counterpart at Manchester City.<\/p>\n

Hughes was derided at various points throughout his tenure as Liverpool\u2019s sporting director. The Scot departed for Al-Hilal when the 2026 summer transfer window closed, and left with much of the fanbase questioning his decisions.<\/p>\n

The centre-back position underwent great change during Hughes\u2019 time at the club, and within just the last 15 months, Giovanni Leoni arrived, a move for Marc Guehi<\/a> collapsed and was then ignored in the next window, Jeremy Jacquet<\/a> signed, Ibrahima Konate left via free agency, and Ronald Araujo joined on loan.<\/p>\n

Rewind the clock back to the summer of 2025 and Liverpool<\/a> were on the cusp of landing England international Guehi for \u00a335m.<\/p>\n

However, when Crystal Palace failed to sign an adequate replacement in time, the plug was pulled. Six months later, Liverpool stood idly by as Man City <\/a>landed Guehi for \u00a320m.<\/p>\n

At that same time, the Reds instead placed their faith in Jacquet, agreeing to pay Rennes \u00a355m plus \u00a35m in add-ons.<\/p>\n

Jacquet would go on to arrive in England six months later, and since donning a Liverpool shirt, he\u2019s looked a class apart despite being just 21 years of age.<\/p>\n

Now, The Times\u2019 Paul Joyce has detailed why Liverpool will ultimately be deemed to have made the right decisions on all three of Guehi, Jacquet and Konate, with the much-maligned Hughes a genius after all.<\/p>\n

Liverpool get every centre-back decision right<\/p>\n

Joyce wrote<\/a>: \u2018It should be remembered now that not only did the fee [for Jacquet] raise eyebrows, given he had only played 33 senior games for Rennes, but last January\u2019s deal came at a time when City had signed Marc Gu\u00e9hi from Crystal Palace for an initial \u00a320m only months before his contract was due to expire.<\/p>\n

\u2018Liverpool had tried to sign Gu\u00e9hi for \u00a335m at the end of the summer transfer window (having first prioritised a deal for Giovanni Leoni of Parma, another young centre back, for \u00a326m) only for the deal to collapse on deadline day.<\/p>\n

\u2018City\u2019s subsequent move for Gu\u00e9hi prompted some Liverpool supporters to decry the club\u2019s strategy as short-sighted.<\/p>\n

\u2018Instead, it could be argued that Hughes was actually thinking long-term at a time when he knew he was already leaving the club.<\/p>\n

MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365\u2026
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* Man Utd icon is Liverpool star\u2019s \u2018role model\u2019 \u2013 \u2018he still is\u2019<\/a>
* Liverpool make U-turn on new contract for Virgil van Dijk with Real Madrid ready to sign him<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018While Gu\u00e9hi represented a plug in and play option given his Premier League experience, City also offered him about \u00a3300,000 a week in wages. Over the course of a 5\u00bd-year deal, that makes the overall package \u00a3100m for someone who will be 31 when the contract expires.<\/p>\n

\u2018Liverpool feel Jacquet can develop into a better all-round player and the collapse of Ibrahima Konat\u00e9\u2019s contract talks at the end of last season must be seen through that lens, too.<\/p>\n

\u2018By all accounts, Jacquet was being viewed as a first-team player and ceding to Konat\u00e9\u2019s desire for a high wage after a difficult season in which his output dipped for a variety of reasons became a problem the club felt they could do without.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool and their former sporting director, Richard Hughes, will have the last laugh with a new Reds signing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,448,348,142864,708,399,4556,50,221,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-792934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-front-page","tag-home-page","tag-jeremy-jacquet","tag-liverpool","tag-manchester-city","tag-marc-guehi","tag-news","tag-premier-league","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}