Among all the big-money deals that have defined the summer transfer window, Liverpool might have made the best move of the lot.
Even by the absurd standards of the modern transfer market, this particular edition of the summer window was especially extravagant. The Premier League spent more money than ever before, often in truly unexpected places. An awful lot of it will turn out to have been wasted, likely including the parts of it that were spent by Tottenham Hotspur if history is any guide.
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Not all of it, however. It’s unlikely that Manchester City’s ultra-wealthy owners will be too worried about the sums spent to sign Enzo Fernández and Elliot Anderson, for instance, even if the deals did require the club to break their transfer record twice. The chances are that they’ll both be exceptionally good, and may even end up looking like good value. On paper, and in terms of sheer quality, they’re arguably the best deals of the summer.
But City aren’t the only team who made smart moves, and based on the evidence that we’ve seen so far – a very small amount of it, admittedly, given that we’re only two games into the season – Liverpool might just have pulled off the best deal of the lot. Jérémy Jacquet is starting to look like a very good purchase indeed.
Why Liverpool might have made the best signing of the summer
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In the truest sense, it might be argued that Jacquet isn’t even really a summer signing. Liverpool agreed to sign him from French side Rennes back in February, with the signing only going through in the summer. For a short while, it looked as though they might have made a mistake.
Less than a week after the deal was agreed – it was worth £55m up front with another £5m in add-ons – Jacquet suffered a serious shoulder injury that ruled him out for the rest of the season and a substantial chunk of the summer. Jacquet only returned to training a little over two weeks before the start of the season and expectations were understandably limited.
He was, after all, a 21-year-old who only had 37 top-flight league appearances under his belt, while his injury status led to a considerable amount of hand-wringing over the state of Liverpool’s defence as a whole. Based on the way he’s started his career at Anfield, however, all that concern was misplaced.
Despite playing just 45 minutes of football prior to the beginning of the campaign – a brief appearance in a friendly against Como in which he scored his first goal for the club – Jacquet has looked incredibly comfortable from the start. The results, a pair of 2-2 draws, might suggest frailties in Liverpool’s defence, but Jacquet certainly hasn’t been at fault.
The young Frenchman was especially impressive against Nottingham Forest, and put up a string of defensive statistics that Virgil van Dijk would have been envious of in his prime: Six out of six one-on-ones, three interceptions, four clearances, a blocked shot and four forced turnovers. Not once was he dribbled past and nor did he make a single foul.
Had he succeeded solely with the more traditional defensive work, it would still have been a fine performance, but Jacquet clearly has far more about him than that – his passing was outstanding (90% completion rate including six out of seven long passes) and he made no fewer than 31 successful carries. That’s an extraordinary number which highlights the easy grace of a player who is utterly comfortable with the ball at his feet.
It was, in short, pretty much the complete performance from a defender who seems to be able to do just about anything that could reasonably be asked of him. And this is how he plays at the age of 21 when he’s fresh off a long spell on the sidelines.
Could Jérémy Jacquet be the best buy of 2026?
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It’s only a first impression, of course, and there may well be some tougher times ahead of a player who is patently talented but still very raw – but he’s already playing at a level most Premier League centre-backs struggle to reach both with and without the ball. Maybe this is as good as it gets, but it seems unlikely, and it’s worth remembering that Chelsea were desperate to sign him too.
Right now, a total transfer fee of £60m looks like it could represent a major bargain given the price a team would pay to sign a defender with a similar skillset who was a little further along in their career. Liverpool may have taken a gamble in signing a greener defender, but the pay-off is a lower transfer fee and considerable potential. Heaven knows where Jacquet’s ceiling is if this is how he plays when he’s short of both match fitness and years.
It’s starting to look like an especially good signing because of how dire Liverpool’s need was in defence. With the loss of Ibrahima Konaté – whose number five Jacquet took over – Liverpool would found themselves reduced to just Van Dijk and Joe Gomez as fit senior centre-backs had they not signed Jacquet. The eventual addition of Ronald Araújo has added depth, but is starting to look rather less necessary.
And while Araújo arrived relatively late in the day, it’s also noteworthy that Jacquet is keeping a far more experienced centre-half who has spent years as a starter for Barcelona out of the line-up. That suggests that Jacquet has made a pretty strong impression on Andoni Iraola.
In a world in which a player like Sávio can go for £75m coming off a bad season purely because of his potential, or in which proven first-rate players like Fernández and Anderson command fees in excess of £100m, spending £60m on Jacquet looks like a canny piece of business rather than a risk – and based on the way he’s played so far, it may prove to be one of the best transfers any team made in this especially expensive summer transfer window.