How Liverpool Used Data to Sign Mo Salah, Allison, and Van Dijk | Dr Ian Graham

0:04Signing 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. 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 realised.

0:43You'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.

1:18Let's get going then into an awesome conversation that changed the way a Premier League club worked and lifted Liverpool from challenges to champions as we welcome Dr Ian Graham to High Performance.

1:35it was summer 2017 uh and again you know full credit to jrgan 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 jrgan is he did give credit where he didn't have to and so his preference was Julian Brandt who was attacking midfield 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 role Brandt could play there.

2:31He's more of an attacking midfielder. Jürgen being German, knew that market really well, had his own network in Germany, giving really positive reports about Brandt. And we kind of agreed. It's 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. So what in the data showed you the ceiling for Mo was higher? Players go through an ageing curve. So, start playing in your later teens, early 20s, performances typically aren't the highest level. Those performances improve with experience of playing against top-level opposition.

3:12Typically, until you're about 27, centre-backs skew older, wingers skew a bit younger. And then the performance sort of slowly declines. And Mo was just on a trajectory that said, OK, it was 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 you just sort of list 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.

3:52Roma were in financial distress. So that market knowledge was really important. That's my colleagues at the club. Our analysis didn't say Roma are 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 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 Yeah, it's a challenge and quite often people don't dig deeper.

5:02If 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 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 nobody gets sacked for Yeah, exactly.

5:56And 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 Jürgen as the leader that 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. And did Jürgen ever ask the question about Mo's struggles at Chelsea?

6:24No, 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 sign-ins 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. 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.

7:04Would you take us into the room where the conversation was had about Mo Salah the data you presented and the reaction particularly from Jürgen who was until that point still thinking that Brandt is is the guy? The data never made it into the presentation because that's not Jürgen'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 shortlist. So typically what would happen is, you know, a 20 or a 30 minute video reel of the players on the shortlist. And who'd be in this meeting? So that would be the sporting director, Jürgen, maybe the head of recruitment or the chief scout.

7:49but 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 Jürgen 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 sign and who would do that voiceover? that 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.

8:27Jürgen's someone who loves a story of adversity, so the fact that Mo had failed, that was a positive to Jürgen 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, 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 Jürgen had the final decision. So Jürgen 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.

9:11And 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... We'd have been unhappy at missing out on Mo. But it was like, this is not a mistake for the club. This is a good signing for the club. And really, it's down to Jürgen. 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, Sain Mane, Wijnaldum, there was one other, Matip, of course, that came to the club.

9:57So having been through that process once, Jürgen trusted what he was seeing, that it wasn't 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, again, the leadership to say, you know what, I was wrong. You've convinced me, let's do it. 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 than what sort of character he was in adversity.

10:41Where would that happen? 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 Jürgen 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 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 his definition is the guy that's demanding the ball when we're getting beat 1-0 rather than the guy that wants it only when we're 3-0 up and coasting.

11:43So there must be some data that would give you evidence of courage, for example. 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, 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.

12:23And again, Jürgen liked 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, 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.

13:01Yeah, of course. But there was a really interesting phrase you used there about the support you had from above, and with Jürgen, you said, I had a degree of safety. And I was thinking of a friend of mine that works 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.

13:45Would you explain a little bit around those conditions, how they were created and why they were so important? 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 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 from above that we were 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 signings 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.

14:33And 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. So in the era where Brendan was the manager, 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? The managers, 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 the manager wasn't convinced by.

15:18Like you, for example. Well, Iago Aspas would be a great one. So many players. so long ago Balotelli would be so Balotelli was an interesting one because he 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 a 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 oh well it's Balotelli, what did you expect?

16:07Which 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 What do you mean the compromise approach? Just explain that for people who are kind of... So the idea of the transfer committee was like the manager comes with his preferred players So you were part of a trustee committee at that time, right? So you've got the manager's view, the data's view, the finance and owner's view, and then the traditional scouting view as well. That's how we worked with Jürgen. Nothing changed behind the scenes.

16:40And 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... But would you all sit together and debate this individual from all those different perspectives? Yeah, 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. It was just stupid and negative. It was like we'd just 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.

17:20So it was just arguments with no progress. And that was because the manager 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 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 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.

18:05So Benteke was his favourite 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 Benteke. He's the player that will move Liverpool forward. 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. Yes, yeah, frustrating. The outcome is frustrating, but we believe in the process. And we were kind of trying to convince each other.

18:41We'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 on to something if we can just sort of get the results get the actual final point of the decision made properly then then we're on to something here 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 in a and I'm thinking 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.

19:33And also what you thought of that Cruyff turn early in his time at Liverpool. Yeah, I think I was probably thinking, please don't try another Cruyff turn. But you That's the player that you get. I'd prefer Alisson with a Cruyff turn to another goalkeeper who maybe doesn't do a Cruyff turn. I think the number one aim for a goalkeeper is to keep the ball out of the net. He wears special equipment gloves. He's allowed to touch the ball. That's a big part of the game. Our previous signing, Karius had suffered some mistakes in the Champions League final. It was very hard for him to get back from that.

20:15And also we understood that... So it would have been 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 5 in defence. And Virgil arriving in the January was a big part of that. And Alisson completed it. So Hugh was a world-class goalkeeper. There were two options, him or Black, who was at Atletico at the time.

20:58And 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're getting a 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 the sorts 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 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 a similar sort of thing with Mignolet 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 he'd never been tested with the ball at his feet in the way that he was at Liverpool so yeah his footwork was the reason it was Alisson the other reason of course is when you look at analysing 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.

22:40Atletico weren't in financial difficulties. Roma were. Guess what? The price is a lot lower from Roma than it is from Atletico. And all of the things that you've said there, great shot stop, are 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 Alisson to kind of back up what the human mind or the human eyes were seeing? 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.

23:16So 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 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 a lot of other data that you can use to measure these things. So the data kind of tells you if he's making, not just making saves, but making saves that are hard saves to make. Yeah, it's the goalkeeper's equivalent of the pass back to the goalkeeper. but 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.

24:06And 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? 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.

24:43So it waited 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. 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're going to allow the chances to try and drag them onto us to create a counterattack.

25:23So, 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?

26:01Part 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 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.

26:36And 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'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 around 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 and said 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 whose team have played brilliantly and the data is saying they're playing the best they've ever played Yeah, reversion to the mean is a manager killer and it also kind of helps the new guy because I've lost five in a row.

28:21I probably could have got a win and two draws in those five games. The team's exactly the same, performs at the same level. The new manager does get a win and 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 an 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. So there's no data actually that backs up this idea of a new manager bounce.

28:56If you're struggling, if you sack your manager, you get better results. There is a new manager bounce and you do get better results, but it's nothing to do with 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 Jürgen'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 16, 17 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 fifth, fourth, fifth, fourth and even the owners, even people in the club didn't quite believe it and the data's never perfect but here are the teams in the past that we've said.

30:04The 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 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 were having an amazing season that doesn't normally happen. 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.

30:44And actually, if people have read your book, there are so many plaudits and praises from you to them. I mean, you know, 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 is Virgil van Dijk, he's going to be the most expensive defender that anyone has ever bought on the planet.

31:14I 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 Dijk became a world record transfer for Liverpool. 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 17-18 season, you had like the classic Liverpool forward line of Salah, Firmino, Mane. I had Coutinho pulling the strings in midfield, like the player I absolutely love.

31:58the 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 defence in the world. Those four players didn't start together very often because against a big team that is a very attack-loaded team, even for a manager with an adventurous style like Jürgen was. and so it was clear we knew we knew the next thing to do was rebuild the defense and we were lucky in some ways i say lucky let's 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 a stupid release clause um so barcelona desperate to sign a player so that world record Van Dijk fee that's paid for by Coutinho going to Barcelona.

32:57So 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. Swap that one world-class attacker for two world-class defenders, Van Dijk and Alisson. And that's a bit cool 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? Yes, but There's this concept 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, if you say Coutinho 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 five or five and a half because they take shots from each other.

33:45so because our attack was so loaded there was a diminishing returns it was hard for us to put well I didn't have to do it thankfully it was hard for Jürgen to put all four players out on the pitch at the same time whereas you know it was the opposite of diminishing returns like great defender even 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?

34:19It's not like four times more attacking than it was 20 minutes ago. 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 Hugh was a large amount of money. And it's literally because at the time, one of the biggest advantages of having Jürgen at the club was players loved him, they loved his football, they wanted to play for him.

34:57So convincing a player of the idea of coming to Liverpool, it was easy when Jürgen was 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 under 27 defender outside a Champions League team I think you put the Champions League teams in he drops to number 2 or number 3 how is this guy not already playing for a top Champions League team.

35:42And why do you think that was the case? 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've 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 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.

36:20So Southampton, great recruitment from them, but his seasons at Southampton really gave the evidence to show he was 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 sign-in players over the age of 24. You look at a lot of our good sign-ins. Mo was 24, Sadio was 24, Firmino was 24, Robertson was 23 or 24, Matip was 24. Why was that the case? 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 that 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 from 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 transfer offer.

37:58And 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, I 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 maximise the amount of performance you get out of Mo. If you sign a 24-year-old, you've got the luxury of either option.

38:34If you sign a 27-year-old, you're not going to take a transfer profit. If you sign a 21-year-old, you have to be more patient with that player as they improve with the team. 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 did that come about? And was there ever a chance that you don't sign Virgil because of his age? Yeah, I remember one of the owners said, I don't know why we... Why are we looking at under 27? That's a really weird thing to do. In our defence... Well, why were we looking at under 27? Because we really wanted Virgil.

39:11But in our defence, centre-backs skews old. So centre-backs, top ones, continue producing into their mid-30s. I was impressed at how long Thiago Silva kept going at Chelsea you know he 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 a bit 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 is 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 cost.

39:56So 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. 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? One thing to say about AI is AI is just very complicated data analysis. You take some data and the AI will analyse it in ways more complicated than humans can understand. But today, football clubs are really bad at simple data analysis.

40:35So 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 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 um all of the players 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 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 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 i think uh we'd have a much better a handle on that game-to-game analysis and much closer feedback loop with the coaches and the video analysts.

42:39So 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've got a large amount of data in 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 some 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 um the more forward-thinking clubs would be there interesting thank you so much for your time my pleasure a huge thanks to dr graham for sharing his story 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.

43:53You can also watch our content on the High Performance app, which really is the very best place to enjoy these episodes. Till next time.

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