Liverpool’s former director of research, Dr Ian Graham, has revealed the club had an “informal ban” on certain types of signings, with Virgil van Dijk an exception.
It is well known that despite Liverpool being among the biggest clubs in world football, they have a reputation as being less free-spending than many of their rivals.
Despite this, they have still been able to compete at the top of football over the last 10 years thanks to Jurgen Klopp, Arne Slot and a team of brilliant data analysts behind the scenes.
Graham was key to Liverpool’s process of identifying new players in Klopp’s early years at the club, and he has now spoken about how the Reds ensured they always got value for money from their players.
The former director of research told the High Performance Podcast: “There was an informal ban on signing players over the age of 24.
“Mo was 24 [when he signed], Sadio was 24, Firmino was 24, Robertson was 23 or 24.
“The idea is younger players demand lower transfer fees. Sign them before their peak, we can develop them to their peak then take the maximum credit or the maximum amount of performance from the players.
“When 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.
“That gives you the sort of luxury of saying you can take a transfer profit on this player or continue to get the performance on the pitch out the player, whichever’s 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.”
Liverpool sold the 25-year-old Coutinho to Barcelona for £142 million in January 2018. They then used those funds to sign Alisson for £65 million and Van Dijk for £75 million.
Alisson was 25 and Van Dijk was 26 when they signed.
In theory, this goes against the club’s policy of signing under-24s that Graham spoke of. However, he explained why Van Dijk was an exception.
“Why were we looking at under-27s? Because [the data team] really wanted Virgil,” he began.
“In our defence, centre-backs skew older. So top centre-backs continue producing into their mid-30s. I was impressed by how long Thiago Silva kept going at Chelsea.
“You know, he as always a brilliant player but I was thinking, ‘oh come on, surely not another season out of him’.
“So centre-backs 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, so we’re going to get plenty of years out of him.
“There were 24-year-olds on the market but for a lower transfer fee, maybe higher wages.
“So always look at the all-in costs. Journalists concentrate on the transfer fee but it doesn’t matter how you spend the money, it’s the all-in costs.”
Graham may no longer work at Liverpool but is certainly still highly regarded by those within Fenway Sports Group and the club’s hierarchy.
No wonder given the success of Van Dijk and many others they championed!
