One of the biggest mistakes of Richard Hughes’ tenure as sporting director at Liverpool Football Club, of which there have been many, from his mishandling of the succession plan for Alisson Becker to failures to replace Luis Diaz to allowing players to run down contracts, was the handling if Jarell Quansah.
The young England international and club trained centre half looked a lock to anchor Liverpool’s defence for the coming decade but a poor first half in his first game under Arne Slot in the 2024-25 season saw him benched and never considered as a starter again by the then new Liverpool head coach, leading to Hughes selling the player for £30M to Bayer Leverkusen last summer.
There, he was a nailed on starter as Leverkusen finished in the Europa League places, and he played well enough there to go to the World Cup with England. For Liverpool, he would have at worst been a strong third choice after Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté.
Liverpool fans always pointed to a £47M (€55M) second summer buyback clause that would allow the Reds to bring Quansah home in 2027 if it made sense, but a lot can happen across two years. Like Arsenal deciding they need 500 centre halves and signing him in the summer of 2026. Which is the current buzz basically everywhere in transfer land.
From The Guardian’s Ed Aarons to The Athletic’s David Ornstein to BBC’s Sami Mokbel, it’s wall to wall Quansah to Arsenal talk out there—and about the only silver lining is that Liverpool are said to have the right to match any transfer bid Leverkusen might accept.
Meanwhile, scuttle has Leverkusen not actively looking to sell but potentially open to a sale at £43M (€50M). It’s a price Liverpool could match, one imagines—but having just signed Ronald Araújo and with Jeremey Jacquet and Giovanni Leoni waiting in the wings, it’s hard to see where Quansah would fit in the mix for the Reds this summer.
It’s not entirely clear, of course, where he fits in at Arsenal. William Saliba’s injury and expected long-term layoff creates an opening, but it’s probably a half-season opening and even then Quansah would be going from nailed on first choice in Germany to probably fourth choice for the Gunners.
Add that all up and there’s a decent case this story is getting so much traction more for its ability to draw eyeballs than because Arsenal are close to actually signing Quansah. Which is to say it could all very easily amount to nothing and everyone going back to assuming Liverpool will bring Quansah home next summer.
But if that was ever really the plan for the club, it does very much seem to be in danger at the moment, and given Liverpool’s issues with not having enough homegrown talent—and in particular club trained talent—having a club trained 23-year-old England international centre half end up at Arsenal like this would sting.