Hull City make initial £5m transfer offer as they seek to finalise defender deal | OneFootball

Hull City have made a £5m plus add-ons offer for Wigan Athletic's Charlie Hughes.

Highlights

Hull City have made an offer worth up to an initial £5m as they look to complete a deal for Wigan Athletic’s talented centre-back Charlie Hughes.

The Tigers are expected to be very busy over the final five weeks of the window, with defensive reinforcements among the priorities for new boss Tim Walter.

It had been claimed that Hughes is on their radar, and journalist Alan Nixon has shared an update of Hull’s pursuit, as he revealed that a ‘new and improved’ bid has gone in from the Championship club.

He states that Hull have offered a ‘guaranteed’ sum of £4.5-5m for Hughes, with a further £2m proposed in add-ons.

Charlie Hughes is capable of making the step up to the Championship

That may seem a significant sum for a League One player, but anyone who has seen Hughes play over the past 18 months will recognise that it’s a fair fee for someone with his potential.

The 20-year-old impressed for the Latics in the Championship during the 2022/23 campaign in what was a tough time for the club on the whole.

Relegation to the third tier enabled Hughes to establish himself as a key player for Wigan, and he enjoyed a fine individual season last time out.

As well as possessing good old-school defensive qualities, the former Liverpool academy player is composed on the ball, and, given his age, there is a lot of excitement about how he could develop in the years to come.

Hull City need a quality Jacob Greaves replacement

The expectation at Hull this season will be to win promotion, but they are going to have to replace two key players this summer, with Jaden Philogene rejoining Aston Villa, and Jacob Greaves leaving for newly-promoted Ipswich Town.

The latter was a key figure in defence for the Tigers, and it felt inevitable that he would be on the move to a Premier League club, but Hull did manage to get a good fee, with Ipswich paying an initial £15m, and it could rise by another £3m.

Since his exit, it has been about identifying a replacement, and Hughes would tick a lot of boxes, in that he is a young, talented defender, and he is also capable of developing in the same way Greaves did.

Hull City’s summer transfer plans

Owner Acun Ilicali has made it clear that he expects a lot of transfer activity to take place before the deadline, and the sales of Philogene and Greaves means that Hull are capable of spending big by Championship standards.

There will be some frustration that so much work needs to be done with the new season just a matter of weeks away, but this update is proof that a lot of work is going on in the background.

There will be confidence that the deal for Hughes can be finalised swiftly, and attention will quickly turn to other areas in the squad that need addressing.