Liverpool spent £670m under Richard Hughes and only got worse

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It was initially a time of high achievement, too: Liverpool have only won two Premier League titles and the second came after Hughes headhunted Arne Slot from Feyenoord as Jurgen Klopp’s replacement. That, it seemed, was the Liverpool way: intelligent recruitment, sometimes eschewing the obvious candidates for the leftfield coups.And yet by the end of Hughes’ reign, Liverpool’s reputation was transformed; perhaps his own, too.

Last season’s expensive underachievement mean that Hughes’ departure, while there has long been an expectation he will join Al Hilal, mean it may be celebrated by many a Liverpool fan, and not merely because he spent too much time on the south coast and communicated too little. He was the face of a strategy and a spending spree that went wrong, but Hughes was the architect of it.

Liverpool’s sporting director Richard Hughes has stepped down after just over two years in the job (PA)As Liverpool went from taking 84 points to just 60, from finishing first to trailing in fifth, from losing one of Slot’s first 28 games to 20 matches in his second season, the formula the club had developed flaws. He can say that, for only the second time in three-and-a-half decades, Liverpool won the English title when he was in situ.