A former Liverpool data guru has revealed that Brendan Rodgers was reluctant to embrace a numbers-led approach to transfers in his early days at Anfield.
The current Celtic boss arrived at Anfield in the summer of 2012, within weeks of Dr Ian Graham, who was the club’s director of research for 11 years. He has released a new book called ‘How to win the Premier League: Inside football’s data revolution’. In it, he explains the methods behind using data to trawl and identify potential transfer targets.
And he shares how Rodgers subscribed to a more traditional approach, while admitting the data heads had yet to prove their worth in the transfer market after getting started on Merseyside. “When I started at Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers was the manager. I think we arrived within a week of each other,” he said. “His concept was the kind of traditional manager decides all signings concept.
“He couldn’t really understand why you’d want to do data analysis. He’d seen a player that’s played well, let’s just sign that player.
“The idea behind data analysis is that you can look at thousands of players you just don’t have time to look at. So in those early days, it was a big culture clash because of that. We were unproven as well. We hadn’t signed any good players using data so really the change came with the arrival of Jurgen Klopp.”
Rodgers has never been shy about cajoling the Celtic board into speeding things up in terms of transfers. Just this last window, he was less than pleased at still waiting on deals in the final week, with the deadline day arrivals of Arne Engels and Auston trusty completing the Hoops’ business.
Speaking last month, he said: “There are a number of things I won’t go into here. But it’s definitely something, having come back in and gone through three windows now, we have to put right as a football club.
“We shouldn’t have been getting into this last week in the position we’re in. That’s the reality. However, that’s something for us for after this window. As I said, we’ll get the players in that we want. We don’t need to manufacture our own stress when there’s no need.
He was frequently referenced the recruitment team at Celtic and praised their work. But transfers never seem to run smoothly at Celtic. Whether his attitude has changed since his Anfield days, only those crunching the numbers at Parkhead will truly know, but it may explain the seemingly slower pace at which deals seem to happen.
Meanwhile, Graham admitted that he wasn’t sure about Andy Robertson‘s defensive credentials. The Scotland skipper was a data signing from Hull and has proved one of the club’s best, going on to lift the Premier League and Champions League. But he was the third choice full back on the Reds’ list the summer he joined and has Jurgen Klopp to thank for overlooking internal worries.
Graham told the BBC Monday Night Club: “There were question marks over Andy Robertson. He was a player who exceeded my expectations defensively. Hull City, with Harry Maguire and Andy Robertson starting most of the games for them, got relegated conceding the most goals in the Premier League that season.
“Robertson was always a world class attacking full back, even when he was playing at Hull. Burt we were worried about his defending. It was difficult to analyse because they changed systems and managers, go promoted and relegated so we’d try and adjust for all of those things through the data analysis.
“but it’s difficult to do. So Robertson was no 3 on our list of full backs to sign that summer and by far the lowest transfer fee. I was excited about it because he was a data, value for money signing. But I remember saying I wasn’t sure about his defending and it was Jurgen that said ‘I don’t care about his defending, I want my full backs to attack, we can cover up his defending with other positions if we’re worried about it.’
“So even though I’ll admit Andy was a data signing, I was a bit reticent about it until Jurgen said he understood my worries. And to be fair to Robertson, he’s a much better defender than I thought he would be.”