It may or may not be surprising that Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp has no interest in statistics, but it may be hard to believe that Michael Edwards was once a “data-averse” man.
Liverpool’s success in the transfer market over the past decade has been down to a team effort based on data analytics, once led by Ian Graham.
Klopp’s appointment was driven by analytics, with statistical factors also playing a part in his belief that Mo Salah would be an ideal signing, although his preference is closer to Julian Brandt.
In exclusive chat This is AnfieldGraham (the club’s former head of research) discussed how Klopp was not a fan of statistics but had a careful way of presenting them to him.
“I’ve never really met Jurgen in person. He’s a very smart guy and has an intuitive understanding of the kind of work we do, but he’s not particularly interested in statistics,” Graham explained.
“And if we wanted to show him the players, we tried showing him player stats a couple of times, but it didn’t excite him and it didn’t enthuse him in any way.”
Providing information right method
Graham’s department operated as a “service provider to other departments,” and they shared insights and recommendations “on the recruiting side,” including Michael Edwards.
That meant Graham and his team had little interaction with Klopp, with Edwards being the one to come up with a shortlist of transfer targets and watch footage with the German.
“Being the manager of Liverpool, or any football club for that matter, is very stressful and time-consuming,” Graham said with a wry smile. “Jurgen has better things to do than look at my stats.”
“When we compiled our final list of candidates, the players who were selected as finalists had already gone through the data process.
“The way it was presented to Jurgen would be similar to them looking at video of a player and saying, ‘Look how many shots he takes from wide, he’s a lot more productive than your average wide forward.’
“All that will be informed by data, but instead of Jurgen saying, ‘Oh, I knew Mo was the number one expected goals scorer in Italy,’ it’s told as a story from video analysis. That doesn’t work!”
We can all agree that bringing in Salah was a brilliant decision by all involved. Roma will still feel like they were robbed in broad daylight!
Edwards’s Change
And as for Edwards, Graham revealed that even he was “anti-data” when they first met, having previously been tasked with delivering “meaningless” statistics to Portsmouth coaches.
“He knew instinctively that it didn’t make sense, and the coaches wouldn’t understand it,” Graham explained. “The numbers he was looking at weren’t how the game worked from his perspective, and he was right.”
Then you can understand that data for data’s sake is of no use to anyone.
Graham added: “(Edwards) understood our approach and the kind of numbers we put out – possession value, goal probability. He understood it intuitively. So he used our numbers as a benchmark.”
You can buy Ian’s book. How to win the premier league: The inside story of the soccer data revolution, here.
Watch and listen to the full 50-minute podcast episode with Ian here.
