Richard Hughes pulled off genius January move

While Liverpool's recruitment team were largely quiet with incoming deals, a number of bold calls were made in the outgoing department.

Richard Hughes has come under fire recently as the club's sporting director for a lack of transfer business, but it seems as though the decisions he has made so far have been correct.

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Jayden Danns was presented with an opportunity to move to Sunderland on loan for the remainder of the season, to get regular minutes on the pitch as the Black Cats attempt to secure promotion from the Championship this season.

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Meanwhile, the future of Darwin Nunez in Liverpool's first team was assessed, amid significant interest from teams in the Saudi Pro League. Hughes decided to decline the offer so as to not disrupt Arne Slot's work with the forward as the club finds itself in the middle of a Premier League title race.

As such, just a month on from the Saudi's approach for the Uruguayan, it appears as though the club has made the right call.

Liverpool justified in keeping Darwin on Merseyside

Nunez is a love-him-or-hate-him type of player. The fans actively have his best interests at heart, willing him to succeed for the club after arriving two seasons ago for a club-record £85m transfer fee from Benfica.

His raw talent and ability suggest that the Reds have an incredibly dangerous player on their hands in attack, capable of being a prolific goal-scorer - in his last campaign in Portugal, he had 34 goals and 4 assists to his name.

But his time with the Reds has been largely underwhelming, despite delivering some clutch goals from time to time.

Across 127 appearances for Liverpool, many of which have come from the substitute bench, he has 39 goals and 22 assists, although this season's efforts specifically equate to just six goals and five assists.

As such, his future at Liverpool was questioned. At 25 years old, he should be on the precipice of the prime of his career, yet he has failed to deliver anything like the form he had for Benfica before he left.

So when Anfield Watch exclusively reported a bid for him from Saudi Arabia, worth £75m, it looked incredibly likely that the striker could depart midway through the season. After all, losing just £10m for him doesn't seem all that bad knowing that you have other options that can be played in place of him and that amount of money could go a long way to helping secure a player like Alexander Isak.

But Michael Edwards and Hughes declined the approach, in favour of keeping him at Anfield. The decision makes tangible sense in terms of not disrupting a title-challenging team and it is plausible that Al-Hilal might go back in for him during the summer.

However, the only justification for such a decision needed to come from an upturn in performances from Nunez. For too much of this season, he has been ineffective, looking lost on the pitch.

But finally, he's started to show positive signs of contributing to the team's success. In Diogo Jota's absence against Brentford, the Uruguayian scored twice in injury time to secure an invaluable win for the Reds and last night against Tottenham, his presence in attack was crucial to reaching back-to-back EFL Cup finals.

He won the penalty that Mohamed Salah subsequently scored to ensure Liverpool had successfully overturned the 1-0 deficit from the first leg of the tie and alongside winning his duels (six out of 10 won) he put in two tackles and made four clearances.

Despite failing to get on the scoresheet, he was finally having an impact on the team after an incredibly dry spell of nothingness.

Speaking after the game, in his post-match press conference, Arne Slot was full of praise for Nunez's performance. He said: "[He was] Better indeed, in general we use the No.9 better and better than we did in the beginning of the season, in the beginning of the season we were quite dependent on our wingers."

Cody Gakpo and Salah have been the main forward threats in the team this season, allowing some of the more underperforming players to go under the radar to a degree.

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But if Nunez can deliver a consistent level of performance for the remainder of the season, putting in the same effort and ambition as he did against Tottenham, then Liverpool's attack will find it a lot easier to win the matches required to secure the club's 20th league title when the season ends.

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