With the 2025-26 season over for Liverpool, attention now turns towards the future. On that front, there’s more than a little trepidation for fans who have watched the side regress considerably over the past 18 months, and it’s not helped by last summer’s transfer business. In 2025, the Reds spent big only to end up with less depth and an unbalanced squad.
They will need to do better now to avoid next season being wasted, too. They’ve already done some work on that front, though, signing 20-year-old
French centre half Jeremy Jacquet from Rennes in January in a €65M deal with the youngster loaned back to the Ligue 1 club for the remainder of the season—and immediately picking up a serious shoulder injury.
Despite some concerns it could see him miss the start of pre-season with his new club, the latest is that he will be ready to go once training for the 2026-27 season begins, with Jacquet telling Ouest-France that his current return timeline stands at around a month as part of an interview where he says goodbye to his boyhood club and looks towards the future.
“I had wanted to stay with Rennes to help the team and in the end I couldn’t,” Jacquet said of his decision to stay at Rennes to finish out a season that in the saw the club qualify for the Europa league. “Mentally it was tough, but I tried to regain hope by telling myself I had to help the team in other ways, to bring a little joy to the locker room and off the pitch.
His role at Liverpool won’t be known until probably late in pre-season, and other moves this summer—and a big question mark around the future of out-of-contract Ibrahima Konaté—could yet play a role, but long-term he says he’s coming to the Premier League to earn a starting role. And for a 20-year-old who cost €65M, you’d expect that to be the target.
“I know my potential,” Jacquet added of making the switch to Liverpool and the Premier League. “I want to play my football and enjoy the moment. I’m going to follow my own path and I don’t know how it will end, but I think I’m off to a good start and I want to play as much as possible and prove myself on the pitch. I have no doubt that things will go well.
“I’d been talking to [Liverpool] for a long time. It didn’t happen in a week. The club’s history weighed heavily on my decision, but so did the project they offered.”
