Richard Hughes breaks silence on Liverpool summer transfer spending - 'You have to detach yourself'
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Richard Hughes has stressed the importance of not thinking about transfer fees as he opened up on Liverpool’s transfer strategy this summer.
When it came to predicting who would be the big Premier League spenders, few would have considered Liverpool, but in the end, they spent over £400m on new recruits.
The outlay was the most ever spent by a Premier League club in a single window, eclipsing the £434.5m spent by Chelsea in the summer of 2023.
Alexander Isak joined for a record £125m, while Florian Wirtz, for £116.5m, and Hugo Ekitike, for £79m, also made the move to Anfield.
Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez and Giovanni Leoni also joined the Premier League champions, as Arne Slot’s squad underwent a major overhaul.
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And now, speaking publicly for the first time since Slot’s first Liverpool press conference last summer, Hughes has explained why the club targeted the players they did, despite the huge fees involved.
“As best you can, you have to detach yourself from what the transfer fee is likely to be,” he told the IMG x RedBird Summit on Thursday via The Athletic.
“First and foremost, the identification of the right player for the right system for the right head coach has a fair amount of importance, and I think this is not something that’s necessarily new for the football club and its ownership.
“If you look at what was paid for Alisson Becker (£66.8m in July 2018) and Virgil van Dijk (£75m in January 2018) in history and you equate that to what that would be in 2025 money, you’re not far away from where you are with some of the fees that have been spent this summer.
“We pay what we believe to be fair market value for a player based on age and based on necessity of that individual to fit into the squad.
“In the fullness of time, we hope that, instead of talking now about what a huge fee it is, it has been value for money for the football club whenever we’re making that assessment in the future.
And because of the ages of the players that we’ve bought, we’re confident that will end up being the case.”
The Reds started the summer with a statement of intent by securing the services of the sought-after Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen in a package worth a then-British record £116m.
Isak then followed on transfer deadline day in a deal that could be worth £125m after a long, drawn-out saga that saw the forward essentially go on strike at Newcastle United in order to force through a move.
And Hughes believes that Liverpool have secured themselves two players who can stay at Anfield for many years to come.
"That would be very much the hope and in buying a player young, you give yourself the ability for that to be the case," he said.
“We also want to try and win now, and that’s important as well, so I’m not describing them as works in progress or anything like that.
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“These are players who have already done a lot in their individual careers.