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The High Performance Podcast
How Liverpool Used Data to Sign Mo Salah, Allison, and Van Dijk | Dr Ian Graham
00:44:21
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- [00:04]
A
Signing Mo was something you could get sacked for if it didn't work out. Where data helps is it gives you something to weigh that Chelsea failure against.
- [00:14]
B
You're about to hear from Dr. Ian Graham, one of the architects behind Liverpool's data revolution and one of the key figures who helped to change the club's trajectory. And as Liverpool heads into a new era, with so much noise around Mo Salah and his future, this conversation just feels even more relevant. Ian's about to explain how Liverpool saw in Mo what others missed. He breaks down why so many clubs were blinkered, how Jurgen Klopp viewed him differently and why the data showed Salah's ceiling was higher than anyone realized. You'll also hear the inside story on Brendan Rodgers reluctance to trust data and what that meant for the club. Ian will talk through the mistakes, the signings that didn't land and the decisions that reshaped Liverpool, including the battle to convince the hierarchy to break the world record to sign Virgil van Dijk. If you want to understand some of the forces that have shaped the last decade at Anfield, this episode tells you what really happened behind the curtain. Listen, before we start, please hit Follow on Apple or Spotify. It means you'll get every episode as soon as it drops. It means we can grow the channel and it means we can attract some incredible new guests. Let's get going then into an awesome conversation that changed the way a Premier League club worked and lifted Liverpool from challenges to to champions. As we welcome Dr. Ian Graham to high performance.
- [01:36]
A
It was summer 2017 and again, you know, full credit to Jurgen and it kind of shows what sort of a leader he is that we were always backroom staff and never said anything. He was front of house and had he wanted to take full credit for Mo's signing, we wouldn't have said anything. We'd just be happy that the player succeeded. But the sort of person Jurgen is, he did give credit where he didn't have to and so his preference was Julian Brandt who was attacking midfielder at Leverkusen. Hindsight bias is a terrible thing. So people have said to me, oh, you compare Brandt and Mo today, there's miles between the two but at the time they were among the best young forwards in Europe. Not so much between them. Mo just fit our style much better. We did rate him higher and he played in the right role. So that sort of wide forward forward role Brandt could play there, he's more of an attacking midfielder. Jurgen, being German, knew that market really well, had his own network in Germany, giving really Positive reports about Brandt and we kind of agreed was like, yeah, he's a great player, but if you look at the price point, it's higher, the performance is lower. And the ceiling for Mo was also higher.
- [02:54]
B
So what in the data showed you the ceiling for Mo was higher?
- [02:58]
A
Players go through an ageing curve, so start playing in your late teens, early 20s, your performances typically aren't the highest level. Those performances improve with experience of playing against top level opposition, typically till you're about 27, centre back, skew older wingers skew a bit younger and then the performance sort of slowly declines. And Mo was just on a trajectory that said, okay, it was a, a good case scenario, he could be one of the best players in the world. So I think we rated him above Premier League average at the age of 24 when he was playing in Italy. And he just sort of lists who are the under 24 wide forwards who are above average and not already playing for a Champions League club. And it was Mo that was it. It's quite unusual for that to happen. And then the price point was low for two reasons. Roma were in financial distress, so that market knowledge was really important. That's, you know, that's my colleagues at the club, that's our analysis didn't say Roma in financial distress. And the other factor was he failed at Chelsea. So when we signed Mo, I remember saying to my boss, I can't believe that. Why aren't Arsenal and Chelsea. Well, obviously not Chelsea. Why aren't Arsenal and Man United in for him? And I don't know if it's true or not, but his idea was Mo had been tarred with this brush of failure at Chelsea. If you look at it, he was behind Eden Hazard in the pecking order. Of course, you're not going to start as a 21 year old. If Hazard's first choice, Mourinho, was the manager. Mourinho likes older, experienced players. Those two things kind of explained why he didn't play at Chelsea.
- [04:44]
C
But those sort of broad brush dismissals of players must be common within football. So I'm interested in how do you push somebody to dig that bit deeper and think about some of those perspectives you've just offered.
- [04:58]
A
Yeah, it's a challenge and quite often people don't dig deeper. If they did, it would have been more difficult for us to sign Mo. And I think that's where data helps, is it gives you an objective history to compare about. It's like, okay, he's failed at Chelsea, but this is the list of players that had similar performances to him at a similar age and a similar amount of experience, they're all hits or they're 90% hits. So you really, it gives you something to weigh that Chelsea failure against. And also, yeah, just even digging into the Chelsea failure is something I think, I mean, I don't know, I think other people didn't do. I think the sort of, I think not just in football but in, in life, doing something different sets you up to fail. And so the way to not fail and the way to sort of get your next job in football is kind of to do the same thing as everyone else is doing.
- [05:54]
C
Nobody gets sacked for playing IBM and.
- [05:57]
A
Signing Mo was something you could get sacked for if it didn't work out like we knew in Liverpool with the owners we had and with Jurgen as the leader that, you know, it gives you that safety to make those braver decisions. But a lot of clubs, I sort of completely understand why you'd be reticent to sign Mo.
- [06:15]
B
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- [08:58]
A
No, that was the great thing about him not being a Premier League manager. He didn't have this fixation of they failed in the Premier League or you have to have proven it in the Premier League before you can come to my club. A lot of our signings didn't have Premier League experience before they came to the club. And you know, Premier League experience reduces the risk, increases the chance of success. It's a much, there's much less variance in the performance, but that comes at price. And so our question was, is that extra price worth paying? 40% premium, same player, Premier League experience or no Premier League experience?
- [09:38]
B
Would you take us into the room where the conversation was had about Mo Salah, the data you presented and the reaction, particularly from Jurgen, who was until that point still thinking that Brandt is the guy.
- [09:50]
A
The data never made it into the presentation because that's not Jurgen's style of thinking or style of learning. So he's aware of what we do and the fact that data analysis is a big contribution to which names are on the short list. Typically what would happen is, you know, a 20 or a 30 minute video reel of the players on the shortlist.
- [10:16]
C
And who'd be in this meeting.
- [10:18]
A
So that would be the sporting director, Jurgen, maybe the head of recruitment or the chief scout. But the data would have informed the sort of clips that were shown, strengths and weaknesses and so on. But those Clips would come with a voiceover to say, Jurgen, you don't know this player in detail. So let me explain to you who this player is and why we think he's a good.
- [10:38]
B
And who would do that voiceover that.
- [10:40]
A
Would be Michael Edwards, who is the sporting director and my boss. You know, over the clips it was like, this is the role he plays for Roma. He'd be a slightly different role for Liverpool, but you can see how the things he does at Roma would translate very easily to Liverpool. This is his history, this is who he is as a player. Jurgen's someone who loves story of adversity. So the fact that Mo had failed, that was a positive to Jurgen when it would be a negative to lots of managers. And it's like, you know, he's gone to do this in Italy after a terrible experience at Chelsea. So you can paint that failure in a positive way to say, you know, he's got some grittiness and some determination to succeed. And the same would happen for Brandt. And we were positive on Brandt. It would be a good signing, just not the ideal signing. And Jurgen had the final decision. So Jurgen saw players in a similar way to Data, so it was rare we'd have big disagreements on who's a good player or not and a similar way to scouting. So usually only good things could come from that conversation. If we'd have signed Brandt, I think it would have been a good signing for Liverpool, just not a great signing. But we wouldn't have been sort of incredibly. And we'd have been happier missing out on Mo. But like, this is not a mistake for the club. This is good signing for the club and really it's down to Jurgen. Like we sort of paint an honest picture of these players. This one was a case where Mo was clearly the number one and this is our honest picture that he's number one. It also helped it was the second transfer window because that first transfer window had been successful. Signed Mane Wijnaldum. There was one other matip, of course, that came to the club. So having been through that process once, Jurgen trusted what he was seeing, that it wasn't, you know, selected highlights to try and put a false view. We weren't putting a false negative view on Brandt, we weren't putting a false positive view on Mo. So that helped. He already had some trust and said, you know, again the leadership to say, you know what, I was wrong, you've convinced me, let's do it.
- [12:58]
C
So you narrow it down. Now you're looking at Mo Salah, you've got Jurgen Klopp on board with it. Where does the sort of psychological profiling then take place? Where you'd go understanding how that failure from Chelsea was processed and what sort of character he was in adversity. Where would that happen?
- [13:16]
A
Yeah, there's not so much science and data behind that, but we had staff in the scouting department and also Michael would pay a lot of attention to that psychological side because you're going to put a lot of weight on character, like the makeup of personalities in the squad. He liked fighters, I was going to say he liked winners. He didn't like winners. He liked fighters that would sort of give their all to win. Whether they won or lost would be secondary to the attitudes that you bring. And that comes from using your network. Sometimes you know, you know someone who knows the player. It's not systematic and it's not data driven.
- [14:00]
C
I'm reminded as you talk about some of these character traits that one of Alex Ferguson's great demands of his players was he said, I want players that are courageous. And in his definition is the guy that's demanding the ball when we're getting beat one nil rather than the guy that wants it only when we're three nil up and coast then. So there must be some data that would give you evidence of. Yeah, courage, for example.
- [14:21]
A
Yeah. So I mean a good example of that. So, you know, involvement, if your involvement is low, that kind of says you're not on the ball. Now there might be, if you're on a low possession team, you need to adjust for these things and do a rigorous analysis of it. So not being involved very much, you know, you could sort of say that's not the sort of player we want. The courageous point is something that the analysis can point to. So I talk in the book about pass completion percentages and if you make an easy pass back to the goalkeeper, your completion percentage is going to be high. And again, you're going to like the risk taking. Players might have a much lower pass completion percentage. If you're trying a difficult pass that's going to break a line or going to create a chance, of course it's going to be less likely to succeed. The question is, are you outperforming? If you're making those passes six times out of ten, which is. Whereas our current player only makes them five times out of ten. Your six out of ten is better than my ten out of ten, which is all back to the goalkeeper. That speaks somewhat to bravery on the ball. You're not going to Draw me on tying it directly to psychology. But it all paints a picture.
- [15:34]
C
Yeah, of course. But there was a really interesting phrase you used there about the support you had from above. And with Jurgen you said I had a degree of safety. And I was thinking of a friend of mine that worked within an elite club who would sometimes offer a counter point of view. And I remember once he told me that he was asked by the coach that he did it with her, remind me how many caps you've won for your country. So it immediately shut down. Ever challenging or disagreeing with that particular individual. I'm interested in the psychological safety that was obviously there for you to be able to come and make suggestions or offer a different perspective without feeling that you were going to be ridiculed or shut down. Would you explain a little bit around those conditions, how they were created and why they were so important?
- [16:24]
A
It comes from the top. It has to come from the top. And in those early days when the club wasn't doing very well, there was a conflict between the manager and what the new things that we were trying to do. So there certainly wasn't a psychological safety when it came to talking to the manager. But we knew Brendan Rogers. Yeah, but we knew from above that we're always given the feedback. Don't worry. We know this is a long term process. We believe in what you're doing. And I think even though the things that happened and the sign ins that we made at the club were not great for various reasons, in those early years the owners could see the names that we were putting forward and our preferences for transfers. And after two or three years this list of names looks quite good. And that gives the owners some belief that, you know, we have something to add to the process.
- [17:16]
B
So in that, in the era where Brendan was the manager, what was the, what was your sort of lived experience then you would come with the suggestion of a player and the data that you believe backed it up, what would happen then?
- [17:29]
A
The manager's. Sorry, the owner's idea was a good one, which was the manager's got a lot to bring to the conversation as well and the manager has to be convinced about the quality of the player. So in the early days we did bring players like Aspas, for example, who went back to Spain and ended up having a great career in Spain, but brought players that, you know, the manager wasn't convinced by. And so, for example, well, Iago Aspas would be a great, a great one. So many players so long ago, Balotelli would be so Balotelli Was an interesting one because he was. Was an unusual case of the data being brilliant on Balotelli. It's like, how is this player available for any fee, let alone the fee that Milan wanted to be fair to Brendan. He wasn't anti the Balotelli signing. The problem was because we'd argued so much and spent so long trying to get to an agreement on the forwards to sign, it was too late. There was no one left in the market except for Balotelli. And so I think Brendan wasn't necessarily against the signing, but also there was kind of like there was a ready made excuse if he fails. It's like, ah, well, it's Balotelli. What did you expect? Which isn't very fair on the player. I think that was the problem with this compromise approach was kind of. We tried it for three years and there was just never any movement. So what do you mean?
- [18:53]
B
The compromise approach just explained that for people who are kind of.
- [18:56]
A
So the idea of the transfer committee was like the manager comes with his preferred player.
- [18:59]
B
So you had a, you had a. You were part of a transfer committee at that time. Right.
- [19:03]
A
So you got the manager's view, the data's view, you know, the finance and owner's view, and then the traditional scouting view as well. That's how it worked with Jurgen. Like nothing changed behind the scenes. And, you know, if the owner's idea was like wisdom of the crowds, if everyone thinks this is a good idea, the chance of failure is much lower than.
- [19:23]
C
But would you all sit together and debate this individual from all those different perspectives?
- [19:28]
A
Yeah, I was, I was lucky enough that I think it was only one of those meetings I actually sat in, in person. I was like, you know what, I can't sit in any more of these meetings. He was just stupid and negative. It was like we just would get nowhere. There was no. The idea of a committee is you sit down and compromise. There's no compromise from the manager's side. And that kind of hardened the other side as well. So it was just, just arguments with no progress.
- [19:57]
B
And that was because the manager sort of had specific players in mind, specific players and didn't believe the data that you were bringing him that would say this person is a good alternative.
- [20:06]
A
Yeah. What happened was if Brendan liked a player that we also liked, then that was great, we'd just sign that player. I think in Brendan's defence, if you're not convinced you're the front of house, you have to sort of play the player. You have to understand who they are and if you're not convinced, it's hard. But he could never, I think he could never trust in the process that we put in place. So he could only trust his own eyes and his view, not the extra information that was being brought. So he was. Bentecy was his favorite forward and we failed to sign Diego Costa because of this argument that went on of, you know, if we're going to sign a forward, it has to be Bentecy. He's the player that will move Liverpool forward.
- [20:55]
B
What a frustrating period actually, for you, because you've got all this data that you've. Like, people are paying money for this data. Right. You're spending hours of your life collating this data and then it's just ending up in a cul de sac.
- [21:06]
A
Yes, yeah, frustrating. The outcome is frustrating. But we believed in the process and we were kind of trying to convince each other. We're like, this process does work, doesn't it? Because the outcome, you know, occasionally you have to look at the results and the results were bad. I mean, I remember the conversations at the time thinking, yeah, we think we're onto something. If we can just sort of get the results, get the actual final point of the decision made properly, then we're on to something here.
- [21:34]
B
One of the great signings in the last few years is obviously Alisson. So I remember when Liverpool first signed him and you remember in the first few games he tried a Cruyff turn in a match and I was watching it thinking, who have they bought that's brave enough to do that? I'd love to talk about the process of finding Alisson, whether it was the manager saying, I want this kind of a goalkeeper that's doing what goalkeepers have never done before, or whether the data was telling you that the direction of the game is going to turn a goalkeeper into your fifth defender or your sort of 11th outfield player. And also what you thought of that Cruyff turn early in his time at Liverpool.
- [22:10]
A
Yeah, I think I was probably thinking, please don't try another Cruyff turn. But, you know, that's the player that you get and I'd prefer Alisson with a Cruyff turn to another goalkeeper who maybe doesn't do a Cruyff turn. Like the number one aim for a goalkeeper is to keep the ball out of the net. He wears his special equipment, gloves that he's allowed to touch the ball. That's a big part of the game. And you know, our previous signing, Karius, had sort of suffered, made some mistakes in the Champions League final. It was very hard for him to get back from that. And also we understood that. So it would have been the January before Alisson was signed. We had one of the best attacks in Europe, but we did not have one of the best defences in Europe. It was maybe top 20 in Europe, something like that. And so to take the team to the next level, it's going to be very, very hard and expensive to go from number three to number one in attack, but much easier to go from number 20 to top 10 or top five in defence. And Virgil arriving in the January was a big part of that and Alisson completed it. So he was a world class goalkeeper. There were two options, him or Black, who was at Athletico at the time and what was the difference between the two? They were among, I think they were two of the top five shot stoppers in the world. So you get in world class shot stopper with either of them. We rated Oblak a little bit better for shot stopping, but then Atletico played a very defensive game. Sort of chances that he was having to save were less similar to a team that played more openly. Like Roma were an open team when we signed Alisson from them. And so the question is, you know, the most important thing, they're both world class at it, both a huge upgrade on our current goalkeepers. So the next question is, well, what else do they do? And playing out for that from the back with Jurgen, with Pep as well, that becomes a more and more important thing. And Alisson had proven he could do it. The similar sort of thing with Minou, signing him from Sunderland. He'd been a brilliant shot stopper at Sunderland, Started off really good at Liverpool for his first season or so. But similarly with Sunderland, there's no. He'd never been sort of tested with his. With the ball at his feet in the way that he was at Liverpool. So yeah, his, his footwork was the reason it was Alisson. The other reason, of course, is like when you look at analyzing performance, it's not just about performance, it's about how much that costs. So you always want to get the biggest bang for your buck. And that's not to say Liverpool were cheap, but if you're going to spend a pound, I want to spend that pound in the most effective way possible. And again, poor old roma. In summer 2017, we'd signed Mo because they were in financial difficulties. Atletico weren't in financial difficulties, Roma were. Guess what, the price is a lot lower from Roma than it is from Atletico.
- [25:22]
B
And all of the things that you've said there, great shot, stopper, good with their feet, the club were in distress. People who are not data analysts could tell you that. Right, so what were the data points that you were using with Alison to kind of. To back up what the human mind or the human eyes were seeing?
- [25:38]
A
Yes. So I mean, expected goals is quite a common concept in the Premier League. At least there's a flavour of expected goals that takes the trajectory of the ball into account. So you can see how difficult that save should have been. So you can ask questions like, what was Alisson's positioning, was he in the best position to stop the shot? And then given his positioning, what's the, what's the chance that we'd assign to him stopping this shot, given its trajectory and given the number of defenders between him and the ball? And you know, a lot of other data that you can use to measure these things. So the data kind of tells you.
- [26:20]
B
If he's making, not just making saves, but making saves that are hard saves to make.
- [26:25]
A
Yeah, it's, it's the goalkeeper's equivalent of the pass back to the goalkeeper. But you know, if you tap the ball at me and I catch it, that's a shot on target that was saved by me. But you probably shouldn't pay too much attention because I just had to stand still.
- [26:40]
C
And would any of this data be used with the players once they'd signed to say, we think you can improve in this area or we think this is a development opportunity?
- [26:50]
A
Yeah, in the early days it was hard because it was event data. And event data just tells you who's on the ball, what they're doing, what happens next. So like I'm in the center circle, I pass it to you, you're on the edge of the box, you take a shot that's saved. And with that style of data, there's too much unseen in that data. So when you say, oh, you passed it backwards in this situation, you said like, yeah, I had a defender right behind me. It was pass it back or lose the ball. So it wasted until tracking data became available where you could see what all the off ball players were doing. And even at that stage there are things it doesn't see. So you have to be very careful in the messaging back to the players. So typically the messaging came back via video analysis. So it's like our data is saying in this game we allowed a lot of dangerous space defensively. And our analysis says it's because of these players positionings. So that would go to the video analysis. So they could check against that. And also the coach might say, you know what, that was our game plan. We can allow the chances to try and drag them onto us to create a counter attack. So, you know, maybe the players were doing what they were told to do. The most interesting stuff we did with the players was via the psychologist. It was always this. Even at the top of your game, you can sort of mistake performance for outcome. And I was surprised that players suffer from this because when you're at the top of the game, you must intuitively understand your performance, but you still need some feedback on it. And it was always the case of, you know, one of our forwards had scored a lot of goals one season and wasn't scoring at the same rate the next season. What am I doing wrong? Part of it was his finishing had been incredible in that first season. And no one repeats that level of finishing performance. The data says, you know, you can't continue converting at 50% more than we're estimating you should. So that was part of it. But then we had a look at where are you receiving the ball, how many times are you receiving it? What are you doing in those situations? He was passing it a bit more, but we thought that was a good thing for the team, not necessarily a bad thing for the team. He was receiving the ball more per 90 minutes in more dangerous situations under a little bit more pressure. And the answer was, you know, you're playing as well or better than last season. Ball doesn't always go in the net. Just keep doing what you're doing. And with one of our top assist makers, let's say again, that number of assists had gone down and like, assist is a bit of a stupid stat anyway, because it's not really under your control. If I'm passing to Mo, he's going to finish it. If you're passing to me, I'm not going to finish it. And it was exactly the same story. It's like you, you're creating More chances per 90 minutes this season than you were last season. The forwards just aren't finishing them off. But we don't think that's anything to do with the quality of the chance you're creating. It's just finishing or things will turn.
- [29:56]
B
So you were able to give the players actually through the data again, some psychological safety, because the people who were doing the job that I used to do, talking about football, one of my frustrations was that we were very much scoreline analysts. If a team wins on a penalty shootout, we praise them to high heaven and talk about how. And I remember doing it with Man United when they won in the Europa League. Wonderful performance. What a great season. I remember covering another team who lost on penalties in a final. They need a rebuild. And you're thinking it's on the kick of a penalty that the media are deciding if a team or a manager or a club is a success or a failure. And you have to go so much deeper with those players because they'll see that and be impacted by that, I guess. And, you know, there'll be managers that have lost their jobs because of poor results.
- [30:40]
A
Absolutely.
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B
Whose team have played brilliantly. And the data is saying they're playing the best they've ever played.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah. Reversion to the mean is a manager killer. And it also kind of helps the new. Helps the new guy because, you know, I've lost five in a row. I probably could have got a win and two draws in those five games. You know, the team's exactly the same, performs at the same level. The new manager does get a win in two draws. And the scoreboard journalism says, wow, he's really turned it around. There's a famous paper that sort of looks at the clubs that sacked their manager. Performances went down and then went back up again. And they found equivalent set of clubs who'd had the same level of bad results but hadn't sacked their manager. And their results went back up in exactly the same way.
- [31:27]
B
There's no data, actually, that backs up this idea of a new manager bounce. If you're struggling, you sack your manager, you get better results.
- [31:33]
A
There is a new manager bounce and you do get better results, but it's nothing to do as the new manager. That's what it comes down to. It's because your results were lower than your performances in the games leading up to the sacking. And your results just sort of came back in line with the performances in the games where the new manager takes charge. We had this at Liverpool of, I think, Jurgen's first. Jurgen's first season. We rated ourselves as a very good team. Kind of given up on the league because we were still in the Europa League. That was our best route into the Champions League for next season. But in 1617, it would have been. We were struggling to get to fourth place. And our analysis was saying we're like the second or third best team in the country already, and we're young and we're going to get better. But we were like 5th, 4th, 5th, 4th. And, you know, even the owners, even people in the club, didn't quite believe it and the data is never perfect but you sort of, you know, here are the teams in the past that we've said. The data always gives you the past to compare against. To say all the teams we said were as good as we are today, they all were really good teams over the next two or three years. So even we didn't really believe it in house sometimes the data helped to say the results just weren't in line with those performances. And also talking about like scoreboard journalism in that season, I think we needed 76 points to finish fourth. So part of us struggling to finish fourth was the rest of the big six. We're having an amazing season that doesn't normally happen.
- [33:10]
B
I want to talk to you about Virgil Van Dijk because you know, I believe Fenway Sports Group have done an incredible job at Liverpool. And actually if people read your book, there are so many plaudits and praises from you to them. I mean the fact that in the early days with Brendan Rodgers where he didn't quite see eye to eye with the stats department, it would have been an easy decision for them to stop spending the money, right? Sack you all, shut it down and work in a much more linear way. But they also want value for money, right? They're smart investors. So when you go to them and you say we've seen a defender, his name's Virgil Van Dijk, he's going to be the most defender, most expensive defender that anyone has ever bought on the planet. I imagine as an owner that's when they go, whoa, hold on, hold on. Right now we really need to be convinced. So I'd love to know the inside story of how Virgil Van Dyke became a world record transfer for Liverpool.
- [34:00]
A
It was definitely not in the Fenway playbook to break the world transfer record for Van Dijk. And then six months later we broke the goalkeeper transfer record before Chelsea smashed it, signing Kepa a few weeks later. So yeah, going back to that 1718 season, you had like the classic Liverpool forward line of Salah, Firmino, Mane and you had Coutinho pulling the strings in midfield like a player. I absolutely love the creative force of the team. He was a player that took too many shots from distance from my liking. But we can forgive him that. And yeah, I think I mentioned earlier on we rated ourselves as top five attack in the world, top 20 defense in the world. Those four players didn't start together very often because against a big team that is very attack loaded team even for a manager with an adventurous style like Jurgen was. And so it was clear we knew the next thing to do is rebuild the defence. And we were lucky in some ways. I say lucky, I say took advantage of an opportunity that might not have arisen. PSG signed Neymar from Barcelona and Barcelona didn't think they were going to do that because he had this stupid release clause. So Barcelona desperate to sign a player. So that world record Van Dijk fee as paid for by Coutinho going to Barcelona. So it was effectively a swap of a world class attacker. But we already had three others at the club. We were in quite a good position in attack. Swapped that one world class attacker for two world class defenders, Van Dijk and Alisson.
- [35:46]
B
And that's a big call because I'm sure the data would have said, you can't get rid of Coutinho, he pulls the strings in the team. Is that right?
- [35:52]
A
Yes, but there's this concept in, in football, as in many areas of life, of diminishing returns. And so for every extra attacker you put on, who wants to take a shot, you know, if you say Coutinho takes five shots again, that's too high. Katina takes three shots a game, Mo takes three shots a game. You put them on the pitch together, you're not getting six, you're getting like five or five and a half because they take shots from each other. So because our attack was so loaded, there was a diminish in returns. It was hard for us to put. Well, I didn't have to do it, thankfully. It's hard for Jurgen to put all four players out on the pitch at the same time. Whereas, you know, it was the opposite of diminishing returns. A great defender, even.
- [36:38]
B
That is so interesting because you see teams struggling to win a game in the 93rd minute and they put two more strikers on. They suddenly got seven attacking players on the pitch. The pundits and the commentators go, well, they might score now they've got seven. What an attacking team it is. But of course it's not like that, is it? It's not like four times more attacking than it was 20 minutes ago.
- [36:57]
A
So the question becomes, here's this opportunity. We wanted to strengthen the defence anyway, and Fenway would have spent to strengthen that defence. But now a whole sort of supermarket of options opens up to us that might not have. Fenway were always very happy to invest in the team. Any transfer profits that were made, happy to invest that back in the team. And here was a large amount of money and it's literally because at the time, you know, One of the biggest advantages of having Jurgen at the club was players loved him, they loved his football, they wanted to play for him. So convincing a player of the idea of coming to Liverpool, it was easy. When Jurgen was in in charge, you see this guy with the big smile, that's why you're going to come to Liverpool, right? And it was literally like, you know, who do you want? That being said, it's still hard to take players from other big Champions League teams. They don't want to sell to a competitor. Wages are typically a lot higher than non Champions League teams. Virgil helped that he'd played brilliantly against Liverpool in the past. He was the best and the 27 defender outside a Champions League team. I think you put the Champions League teams in, he drops like number two or number three, like, how is this guy not already playing for a top Champions League team?
- [38:16]
C
And why do you think that was the case?
- [38:18]
A
He took a long time to come to the boil. So he was probably underrated a little bit At Celtic and at Celtic it's hard to measure defenders. You don't have to defend. You just got the ball for 90 minutes. And so you only really see games against Rangers, games in Europe where Celtic are now huge underdogs. And so you're not really seeing the set of things he has to do in the Premier League. I spoke before about the Premier League premium. If he was in a big German club or a big Spanish club, or you know, a medium sized German or Spanish club, we'd have seen the sort of things he challenges he has to face in the Premier League a lot more. So Southampton, you know, great recruitment from them, but his seasons at Southampton really gave the evidence to show he's a great defender playing above Southampton's level. So he was 26 when we signed him. And so yeah, a late developer really. I think even the previous season at Southampton, we thought he was really good. It was quite funny that Fenway there was an informal ban on signing players over the age of 24. You know, a lot of our good sign ins Mo was 24, Sadio was 24, Firmino was 24, Robertson was 23 or 24, Matip was 24. As you know, I can just.
- [39:35]
C
Why was that the case?
- [39:37]
A
So yeah, that came from. That came from the top. The smart people that run run the group. If you look at performance, and we spoke earlier about the aging curve, you get increasing performance to the age of 27, then it plateaus. It doesn't really decline very much. It's kind of like the Minutes that decline more than the performance. So if the players can stay fit, they're going to keep producing for you into their 30s. And then there's also a transfer fee. So the idea is younger players command lower transfer fees, sign them before their peak players, we can develop them to their peak and then take the maximum credit or the maximum amount of performance for the players if they're signed when they're 24 or younger. There's a chance after two years, like happened with Coutinho, that a big club comes in with a, with a transfer offer and that gives you the sort of luxury of saying you can take a transfer profit on this player or continue to get performance on the pitch out of the player, whichever is the most important thing to the club at the time. So you look at 2018 and transfer profit for reinvestment was the most important thing you look at. You know, I did the previous or helped with the previous MO renegotiation to take him through to the age of 33 and at that point the correct decision for Liverpool was just to maximize the amount of performance you get out of mo. If you sign a 24 year old, you've got the luxury of, you know, either option. You sign a 27 year old, you not going to take a transfer profit. Send a 21 year old, you have to sort of be more patient with that player as they improve with the team.
- [41:18]
B
So you were having to convince them then with Virgil to break the world record at the time and that he was over 24. So how, how did that come about? And was there ever a chance that you don't sign Virgil because of his age?
- [41:30]
A
Yeah, I remember when one of the owners, I don't know why we. What, why are we looking at under 27? That's a really weird thing to do in our defence. Well, why, why were we looking at under 27? Because we really wanted Virgil. But in our defence, centre back skews old. So centre backs continue, top ones continue producing into their mid-30s. I was impressed how long Thiago Silva kept going at Chelsea. You know, it was always a brilliant player, but I was thinking, oh come on, surely not another season out of him. So centre back skew older and because of that you can say 26 in centre back years, but like dog years, 26 is 24 in forward years. We're going to get plenty of years out of him. There were 24 year olds on the market that were for a lower transfer fee, maybe higher wages. So always look at the all in cost journalists Concentrate on the transfer fee, but it doesn't matter how you spend the money, it's the all in costs. So that combination, you know, the high transfer fee, the wages were high as well, but maybe not as high as a player coming from a current Champions League team.
- [42:38]
B
I'd like to talk about the future of this world. The advent of AI and the growth of AI has been incredible. What single area are you most excited about when it comes to football? Data analysis. And looking forward.
- [42:51]
A
One thing to say about AI is it's AI is just very complicated data analysis. You take some data and the AI will analyze it in ways more complicated than humans can understand. But today football clubs are really bad at simple data analysis. So I'd say from a football club point of view, get the basics done first before we worry about AI. That being said, AI is already used when it comes to football data, mostly with football data collection. So computer vision algorithms that tracking data that we get that shows where all the players are, it's not people noting down where the players are, it's an AI algorithm that, you know, watches the game and tells you exactly where the players were. Advances in those algorithms give you things like semi automated offside, they tell you the position of all of a player's limbs, which direction they're looking, are they making a kicking motion, that sort of thing. Without AI algorithms that data collection doesn't happen. I think it gets to the stage where the real benefit for clubs is going to be the democratization of data. More than you know, this amazing algorithm tells me the next Messi to sign, it'd be more that clubs that can't afford to today have the same set of tools at their disposal that a Premier League club does. AI will help them do that. So you know, just with a camera phone, a few camera phones, you can record the game, translate that into the same quality of data or a similar quality of data that Premier League clubs get today. You know, National League clubs don't have that quality of data because they can't afford to put all the cameras up in the gantry. They probably don't have a gantry. But yeah, the algorithms help with that simple stuff.
- [44:46]
B
And if you were writing your book, how to win the Premier League 2.0 in 2028, 2030, what do you think the world of data analysis and football would look like then?
- [45:00]
A
I think we'd have a much better handle on that game to game analysis, a much closer feedback loop with the coaches and the video analysts. So in the book I talk a lot about recruitment because that's where I spent most of my time and one of the reasons why it's the first place where data is used at clubs is you got a large amount of data and thousands and thousands of minutes. But you need that because the data is imperfect. You need to see a lot because you know in any individual situation you might not quite be seeing the right thing. So with with the new data that's made available by AI algorithms, you can see the exact circumstances. So I think being able to say something about individual feedback player performances in a game, the coach's plan in the game, have a discussion with a coach to say what is your game plan? Measure how well that was implemented in a game that's currently beyond where clubs are at. In five years time I think the more forward thinking clubs would be there. Interesting.
- [46:08]
B
Thank you so much for your time.
- [46:10]
A
My pleasure.
- [46:13]
B
A Huge thanks to Dr. Graham for sharing his story and insights. If you want to go even deeper into the world of the data revolution in football, his new book how to Win the Premier League is out now. Don't forget to subscribe to High Performance wherever you listen so you never miss an episode. You can also watch our content on the High Performance app, which really is the very best place to enjoy these episodes. Till next time. This holiday, Verizon is giving you incredible gifts and savings you'll enjoy all year. When you Switch, you'll get four new iPhone 17 Pros. No trade in needed. That's right, get four lines for just 25 a line and the amazing iPhone 17 Pro for everyone. Save big this holiday. Visit Verizon today. 20 monthly promo credits applied to account over 35 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Additional terms apply for phone offer. See verizon.com for details. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.