According to Jermaine Jenas, selling Sadio Mane to the Reds in the summer was a terrible mistake, and Liverpool’s recruiting throughout the window was subpar.
The Reds’ season has gotten off to a very worrying start. With just two victories in their first seven games, Jurgen Klopp’s team is currently ninth in the Premier League standings.
In their first match in the Champions League group stage, they too lost badly. And it certainly seems as though they are being penalised for not working more throughout the summer.
It was a major mistake to sell Mane.
They obviously came dangerously close to taking home four titles last year. However, it is difficult to contest that they have advanced.
Darwin Nunez will undoubtedly succeed at some point. But there’s no denying that he’s off to a shaky start. Mane was lost to Bayern Munich in the interim. The Senegalese contributed significantly to the team’s ability to advance and consistently win trophies.
Jenas believes that Liverpool’s decision to allow Mane to depart was one of the worst mistakes the team has ever made.
“I think it’s really simple with Liverpool. Selling Mane was the biggest mistake they’ve ever made,” he told Rio Ferdinand’s YouTube channel.
“So when you talk about the press now and people might go: ‘well, Luis Diaz does this, that and the other’, nobody set the press or set the example or worked as hard as Mane did. And they got themselves into a bit of a pickle from a contractual point of view. I just think their business has just knocked them for six a little bit.
“Darwin Nunez is not working. Midfield, how they didn’t highlight the midfield knowing the injuries that they’ve had consistently for years, how they’ve not highlighted that and got some youth in there. Their recruitment this year has been poor.”
At some point, Liverpool has to begin the process of moving on.
The Liverpool team had to change at some point. At one point, neither Mane nor Mohamed Salah had a contract for the next season. The Reds thus couldn’t take the chance of losing both in the same window.
One of the most thrilling strikers now competing in Europe is Nunez. And writing him off would be completely insane.
It was never going to be easy to advance the side right away when replacements for the previous crop were required. They had made a name for themselves as one of the best teams in the annals of one of the most prestigious clubs in football history.
They probably miss Mane right now. But ultimately, they’ll be hoping that the decisions they made during the summer will enable them to go on once more.