The hard rumours about Richard Hughes joining Saudi Pro League side Al Hilal started roughly 18 months before the end of his contract, which is what you’d expect for a footballer representing the Premier League champions.

Except, Hughes is a sporting director who only arrived at Liverpool in 2024.

Different versions of what his future might look like have since circulated, while an April takeover at Al Hilal has complicated matters — conversations were ticking along before the country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) sold a 70 per cent stake to the Kingdom Holding Company, a firm run by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the billionaire businessman and member of the Saudi royal family. Some believe that Hughes is committed to Liverpool for this summer at least but it is less clear what happens after that.

What happens with Hughes cannot be viewed in isolation, however. He was appointed by Fenway Sports Group’s Michael Edwards, who returned to the organisation in 2024 after walking away officially two years earlier. Edwards was given the remit of overseeing the purchase of another football club, but FSG has so far knocked back his proposals, meaning FSG’s head of football currently has just one club to run — the same one he represented quietly under a variety of titles for the best part of a decade.

If Edwards does not find the terrain stimulating enough any more and decides he does not want to wait around for his bosses to bite, then it weakens Hughes’ position. And that in turn weakens Arne Slot’s position as head coach, because the Dutchman was a Hughes appointment. If FSG is on top of this, it should lead to questions internally about whether it is right that two employees who might not be involved pretty soon get to decide whether Slot, under immense pressure himself, stays or goes.

Furthermore, everyone in football knows Edwards, Hughes and Slot’s contracts are up in 2027, and this has the potential to threaten Liverpool’s recruitment plans. By extension, this reduces the chances of Slot wrestling back his credibility because every player Liverpool target and each representative they speak to will want to be sold a bigger picture. How does Hughes respond if it seems as though he does not have faith in the project, or if it seems those who originally signed off on his appointment are no longer entirely convinced by him because his contract is running down?

Football executives like Hughes and Edwards were framed as the people who outlasted the manager or head coach, giving a club a better chance of carrying on a philosophy in spite of changes in the dugout. The constants in an industry of considerable flux. Liverpool have been among the clubs to have been praised for having a plan and being structured in a way that makes the possibility of stability easier.

Michael Edwards (left) and Richard Hughes with the Premier League trophy in May 2025 (Nikki Dyer/LFC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Almost all Premier League clubs at the moment have someone with significant power between ownership and football staff, but employment patterns in recent years show that, while such figures are highly sought after, they are also expendable. Over half of those at Premier League clubs have been appointed in the last two years, with relatively frequent movement between clubs.

It will be interesting to see how many sporting directors Chelsea bring to Anfield this weekend because they have five of them, the first of whom joined in 2022, and the most recent — Dave Fallows (from Liverpool) — in 2025. Chelsea’s omnishambles, however, reminds that a reasonable degree of consistency in terms of decision-making around key executive issues such as recruitment does not always translate elsewhere if, say, the players are not quite ready, or the head coach does not have enough experience to lead them.

Like Liverpool, Manchester City announced a change of sporting directors in 2024 and Arsenal followed the next year, with Aston Villa — having pushed into the Champions League — making the same move in 2025. Each of these clubs have roughly ended up doing what Liverpool did under Jurgen Klopp, whose power grew to the extent that the structure fitted around him.

Klopp’s departure should remind owners, wherever they are based, that even when you might think you have found the best man to lead your club, you cannot just leave him to it. Just as he needs appropriate support, he needs to be challenged. Big clubs tend to find that big personalities suit being at the tiller but you have a better chance of keeping them going if you are present and on top of them.

It is often said that smaller clubs perform better with executive-type structures that are not reliant on who talks with the most authority about the team. There has to be some truth in that — it is surely easier for head coaches to get on with their jobs at places such as Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton because wider scrutiny simply isn’t as intense.

Andoni Iraola, for example, is widely accepted as being a very talented manager, but there have been points during his relatively short stay at Bournemouth where form has been streaky. Elsewhere, he would not have been given a pass. The same goes for Fabian Hurzeler, who has recently signed a new contract, when only a few months ago, some Brighton supporters were wondering whether he had enough experience.

While Brentford’s director of football Phil Giles is the longest-serving figure of his type in the Premier League, having been appointed to the role in 2015 (a season after the club was promoted to the Championship for the first time since 1993), Brighton and Bournemouth have lost executives to Chelsea and to Liverpool over the last few years and each of those individuals could be moving on again soon.

Such flux is not restricted to the top flight. In July 2025, sixth-tier AFC Fylde formally introduced Stewart Mairs as director of football. Last month, with Fylde on the brink of promotion, he jumped two levels to join Walsall as head of football. It was a positive step, but there are plenty of examples of clubs getting it wrong and realising it pretty quickly.

In January 2025, fresh from an American takeover, Carlisle United signed 11 players to fit the philosophy of the team’s new head coach. Except, by the end of the transfer window, Mike Williamson was fired and, after relegation out of the Football League a few months later, sporting director Rob Clarkson went with him.

Perhaps the era of the short-term football executive is here.