The lessons Liverpool must use to get Michael Edwards back on the transfer market

There are ways to introduce yourself to Jurgen Klopp. Running through the defeats that sent his Borussia Dortmund team to the foot of the Bundesliga, 18 months after they had been Champions League finalists, might seem one of the most unorthodox. For Ian Graham, Liverpool’s former director of research, there was method to the apparent madness.

“I was nervous,” he said. “I think his personality was just for the cameras and the media, but it’s not. He just has no filter, so the way he would talk to you is exactly the same as the way he would talk to me or a guy he met on the street. He’s very excited and emotionally involved.” That’s what Graham discovered when he delved into the seemingly dry subject of expected goals from various shots in games during Klopp’s dreadful autumn of 2014.

“I think the first one was against Mainz. His reaction was, ‘We fucking destroyed them in the game, did you see that?’ He had a clear vision of the chance they missed,” Graham recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. ‘They score this goal eight times out of 10!’ Yeah, that’s what expected goals say. The second game was, ‘Oh, damn, we were so unlucky in that game, I can’t believe it.'”

And if it creates an image of an animated Klopp in a Melwood office, still irritated by the losses a year later, then that has helped create understanding. “That was a really nice way to come in,” Graham said.

“It was a way for me to say, ‘Hey Jurgen, we think you’re great and then (German newspaper) Image said you were rubbish but we still thought you were great – you were just unlucky.” Graham’s figures showed that Dortmund, even in a year in which they finished seventh, were still the second-best team in Germany.

If Liverpool’s rise under Klopp was about the emotional underpinnings of statistics, then at best they won the numbers game. Klopp is a people person: “Jurgen doesn’t like looking at tables of statistics; coaches are visual thinkers, he likes to watch videos, he likes to hear the player’s stories, he likes to know what their motivations are, in a very emotional way.” But intelligent use of data helped them build a stellar record in the transfer market and – at one point – win 35 out of 36 league games. “We’ve shown that it can be used to get more performance for less money,” Graham said. His new book is called How to the EredivisieIt could also have been called that How to win the Champions League.

The first lessons, however, were about how not to win the Premier League. There was a time when Liverpool’s transfer committee became notorious, when Brendan Rodgers was sceptical of the advice of men like Graham and his close ally Michael Edwards. “Brendan wasn’t open to the idea of ​​statistics, and I have some sympathy for that,” Graham said. Rodgers wanted to sign Tom Ince, while Graham and Edwards wanted Philippe Coutinho. History will judge who was right.

A revolution can have winners and losers, even if it’s not that simple. “The war between the nerds and the real football guys is a bit of a caricature,” Graham said. “That’s not to say there weren’t clashes.”

Klopp’s 18-month tenure brought two high-profile signings that highlighted the lack of unity at Anfield. When Luis Suarez left, Alexis Sanchez – everyone’s top target – opted for Arsenal instead. “Then we had target No. 2, which we didn’t agree with Brendan; target No. 3 was Brendan’s choice that we didn’t want to come to the club; so by the end of August and we didn’t have a striker, Mario Balotelli was eighth or ninth on our list.” Balotelli scored one league goal and was replaced a year later by Christian Benteke, who also didn’t fit into the system.

Klopp brought clarity of thought; square pegs went into square holes. Liverpool knew who not to sign. “One of the advantages of working with Jurgen was that we knew exactly what was expected of each role,” Graham said.

That’s why Andy Robertson became an iconic signing, and not just because of his £8m price tag. “Jurgen had the realism to say that even Liverpool, because we didn’t have infinite money, had to make some compromises on players,” Graham said. Robertson was third on the list of identified left-backs, but Manchester City were able to outbid Liverpool for Benjamin Mendy, and Emerson Palmieri was injured. The Scot’s statistical profile was mixed. “I really wasn’t sure about Robertson’s defence when he arrived, and it was Jurgen who said, ‘My full-backs have to attack, we can replace his defence,’” Graham recalled.

Klopp’s style of front-foot football meant they had to buy a certain type of centre-back. At £75m, Virgil van Dijk became the most expensive player in the world. He wouldn’t stand out as much, Graham believes, in another team. “If Virgil was in a (Tony) Pulis team, you might not see the best of Virgil because a lot of his qualities just aren’t being used in a low-block team.”

Edwards famously convinced Klopp of the merits of his best attacking signing. However, for team-building purposes, they didn’t want another Mohamed Salah. “We tried to look for complementary strengths, so if you have a striker like Mo Salah who (on average) shoots four times a game – it’s only the world-class strikers who can shoot four times a game – and you have another striker who shoots a lot, you’re not going to get eight shots from those two strikers,” Graham added. “If we were to bring in (Robert) Lewandowski, he would take chances that Salah would have had if Lewandowski wasn’t in the team.”

In a period when Liverpool have enjoyed an almost perfect recruitment record, there is a strange anomaly. Graham is open about being Naby Keita’s greatest champion. “I love Naby,” he said. “He was the best defensive midfielder in Austria, then the best attacking midfielder in Austria, then the best attacking midfielder in Germany. And all that at 23. I thought we were signing a better version of N’Golo Kante, and when he played, he wasn’t as good as I thought he would be. I thought he was going to be the best player in the world.”

Injuries and the reliability of Milner and Gini Wijnaldum, who made them indispensable to Robertson, ultimately worked against Keita. “I thought we needed a surprise in midfield and Naby was that surprise,” Graham smiled wryly. “But he surprised the coaches more than the opposition.”

Keita might be seen as a misstep, but as Liverpool move on from Klopp, they remain the team that denied Manchester City the Premier League title for the last seven seasons – built on the laptop and on the pitch. A triumph of bespoke software and Counter pressure.

‘How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football’s Data Revolution’, by Ian Graham, is available for purchase on Amazon and available in bookstores from Thursday, August 15.