How Brighton 3-0 Arsenal showed just how poor Liverpool’s recruitment became under Richard Hughes

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For those keeping a keen eye on their transfer business this summer, it may not have been a surprise to see Brighton comprehensively beat Arsenal on Saturday afternoon.As ever, the Seagulls made some excellent moves, and have been rewarded with a fantastic start to a season which promises even further improvement.Since their promotion to the Premier League in 2017, Brighton have perfected the art of buying promising players for low transfer fees and moving them on for big money in one, two or three years. Relying on the data garnered from Michael Edwards’ laptop, the Reds made some of the shrewdest moves in Premier League history.Rather than going for the obvious, big-name signings which they have decided to pivot towards recently, Liverpool adopted a data-first approach, which saw them back the likes of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Andy Robertson with huge rewards.Those were players who were on the cusp of breaking through and exploding into their peaks, but if Liverpool had the chance to sign them today, they would almost certainly have passed it up.It is hard to pinpoint an exact moment when this changed, but Richard Hughes‘ recent reign is the best evidence that Liverpool’s approach is now unrecognisable.

The market has changed, that is clear, but in the period where they seemingly could do no wrong, it is impossible to think that the Reds would have spent more than £350m on three players like Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Bradley Barcola.READ MORE: Fabinho says he’s loving playing with Mo Salah again as Liverpool legend hits first Trabzonspor hat-trickIn the summer just gone, reserving £123m to sign Barcola meant that Liverpool had to forego signing a player in an area of the pitch which they badly needed help in: the midfield.Hughes would no doubt claim that money was not the issue here, rather there were no players available who offered quite what Liverpool were looking for. Chema Andres could have fixed Liverpool’s midfieldThere was a time when Liverpool would almost certainly have looked into the availability of Andres from Stuttgart this summer.

Liverpool perhaps wanted to see how he would fare in the Premier League before committing funds to signing him, and there is perhaps an argument that Andres would have blocked Nyoni’s pathway to a degree. But £20m is spare change to the Reds these days, and he looks like having the kind of profile which really could have made a difference to Andoni Iraola this season.In the past, it feels as though Liverpool may well have sniffed out Andres and got a deal in place to sign him.