Ten years ago this week, Sadio Mane scored on his home debut for Liverpool in a 4-1 victory over the Premier League champions, Leicester City. It would be the second of 120 goals for a club where he won almost every major trophy across 269 appearances, leaving as a legend in a deal that almost earned Liverpool their money back.Tied into his success, the figures around Mane should act as a case study for whoever replaces Richard Hughes as the master of Liverpool’s transfer strategy. Even allowing for inflation, good business is bringing in a 24-year-old for £30m before moving him on with a stack of medals, aged 30, for a sum that could have stretched as far as £35m.The Senegalese ultimately did not return a profit because he struggled to settle in at Bayern Munich and moved on a year later to Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia, where he remains. This has contributed towards a view that Liverpool could have kept Mane for a while longer. At Mane’s point of exit, his 23 goals during 2021-22 were his second-highest tally across six seasons. Yet he had spent a chunk of his final campaign at Liverpool positioned in the centre of Liverpool’s attack, rather than on the left where he had been so dynamic in earlier years.Mane was key to Liverpool’s dominance under Jurgen Klopp (David Ramos/Getty Images)The decision was partly taken because Roberto Firmino’s influence had started to wane. And in the meantime, Liverpool had already sourced Mane’s replacement. Like Mane, Luis Diaz, having joined from Porto, ended up in Munich as a Premier League winner, only on this occasion Liverpool turned over a handsome profit.The sequence is difficult to achieve, but it is one Liverpool should also refer back to. Diaz’s departure currently looks like a bad decision because he has done so well at Bayern, while no one has taken the mantle from him at Anfield, with the team struggling since the summer of 2025 for many reasons.It would be tempting to conclude that the trail tells you it is not necessarily about how much you buy for, or how much you can get out of a sale, but how suitable and, by extension, successful the next guy coming in proves to be. Yet the chances of that happening surely increase if the numbers stack up, broadening a club’s options.