Late on Monday, news broke out of France suggesting Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain had finally arrived on the same page regarding the transfer of Bradley Barcola from the French club with both sides able to live with a €140M (£120M) fee and a formal bid PSG would be willing to accept imminent.
With the Reds already weak on the wings last season after sporting director Richard Hughes sold Luis Diaz and didn’t see the need to source a replacement and now also needing to replace Mohamed Salah after pushing
him out of the club, it was welcome news with time running out in the transfer window.
Today, though, it appears we’re taking a step back. At least according to reports on the English side, with The Athletic’s David Ornstein saying rather than a final bid being sent it’s Liverpool calling a meeting with their counterparts to “bring clarity” to the transfer saga and see if an agreement is possible.
That feels like it’s a long way from being ready to put in a £120M bid that PSG has signalled they would accept. Meanwhile, Liverpool will still need at least one more wing signing after Barcola—assuming it actually does get done—and the club also still have worries at striker, in midfield, and at right back.
Even if Hughes does manage to get Barcola over the line, then, there seems a very good chance the transfer window will slam shut with the squad again well short of what’s required for a side looking to challenge on four fronts that went into the offseason with a slew of issues that have mostly got worse.
Hughes was hand-picked by a returning Michael Edwards to oversee recruitment as sporting director in 2024, and the duo and head coach Arne Slot were gifted a title calibre squad by the departing Jürgen Klopp. In fact, they won the Premier League title in that first year after making no major changes.
Edwards and Hughes then did a victory lap in the press celebrating the achievement and seeking to minimize Klopp’s role in building the team they won with—and then immediately made the squad worse last summer, fixating on star signings while ignoring problem positions and selling off depth.
The result was a weaker overall squad than they inherited, lacking depth and notably imbalanced. On Sunday against Newcastle, new manager Andoni Iraola—hired after Slot continuing became untenable in part due to failures of recruitment—kicked off the year with a squad weaker still than last season.
Which brings us back to the present and Hughes and his team flying to Paris to try to get a deal across the line that should have been done a month ago and meanwhile there’s a slew of other squad issues—largely self-inflicted, mind—that need solving and probably won’t be even if Barcola gets done.
