Set pieces need specialists, not reshuffles

Liverpool wanting to get sharper from set pieces is hardly a controversial idea. In the Premier League, you live and die on fine margins, and dead-ball moments are basically free chances if you’re well-drilled. So the club looking at that area and deciding it needed focus? Makes total sense.

What doesn’t sit right is how you go about fixing it. There’s a world of difference between appointing an actual specialist and simply moving someone across because they’re already in the building and doing a decent job in a different lane. That’s the bit that feels odd here.

Development work and set-piece work aren’t the same job

My understanding, and what you tend to see at elite clubs, is that development coaching is often individual-led. It’s tweaks, habits, repetition, confidence. You’re trying to nudge a player’s game forward in small, specific ways over time.

Set-piece coaching is a different beast. It’s collective organisation, choreography, timing, blocking runs, second balls, and the boring-but-essential detail of who stands where and why. It’s also opposition analysis, match-to-match adjustments, and getting buy-in from a whole group. If you haven’t lived in that world, it’s not something you just pick up because you’ve done a bit of work on delivery.

Maybe there was a logic, but it still feels forced

You can see the possible thinking. Maybe he’d been involved in improving deliveries or working with one or two players on striking the ball, and somebody decided that was close enough to “set pieces” to make it a natural extension.

But it isn’t. Delivery is only one part of the puzzle, and arguably not even the hardest bit. The hard part is building a reliable structure that stands up under pressure, away grounds, late-game chaos, and all the rest of it. If there was no clear sign the role suited him, then that’s not on the coach being moved. That’s on the decision-makers.

It reflects badly on recruitment and planning

This is where the frustration really lands. If Liverpool identify a specialist need, then act like a top club and go and get a specialist. Not because it looks neat on an org chart, but because the skillset is genuinely specific.

And if you don’t, it invites an obvious criticism: either you couldn’t find the right person, or you didn’t fully understand what you were looking for in the first place. Neither is a great look for Hughes, especially when small edges are exactly what decide whether you’re chasing titles or chasing fourth.

Written by JLC: 7 January 2026