Decent piece in The Times from Joyce:
For years Liverpool have sought to emulate Manchester United’s clout off the pitch — and not just in terms of their commercial success. Yet, at Anfield on Sunday, it will be the away side who will feel that they have much to learn from the structure put in place by their hosts.
Envious glances will be cast not only towards Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Jürgen Klopp but will extend, too, to Michael Edwards.
He is the man who stitched into the smallprint of Philippe Coutinho’s £142 million move to Barcelona a £100 million surcharge should the Catalans return for any other Liverpool player before 2020 and who secured Naby Keïta’s arrival 12 months in advance to ward off other suitors.
The “anti-Arsenal” clause reputed to have been included in Roberto Firmino’s contract when he signed, a response to the Londoners’ failed bid for Luis Suárez, has never been confirmed nor denied but seems the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that is protecting Liverpool and propelling them forward.
So while Klopp is central to a bubbling renaissance, the work of Edwards, the sporting director, together with his closely knit team of scouts and analysts, is also playing a crucial role in the club punching their weight once again.
It is not by chance that the team who are top of the Premier League boast the third-youngest starting XI in the top flight, a line-up that can grow with the manager, with the nucleus contracted to 2023-2024, without buy-out clauses.
It is a model that offers United food for thought. They have spent hundreds of millions of pounds in recent seasons without an overarching figure pulling all the necessary strands together and ensuring mistakes are kept to a minimum.
At Old Trafford, the prototype pits the manager, José Mourinho, with the executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, and espouses a short-term approach where options are triggered on contracts to delay the threat of players walking out on free transfers.
Edwards, who played for Norwich City as a schoolboy and then for Peterborough United reserves, shuns the spotlight and never gives interviews. But his rise to eminence is rooted in his work as a performance analyst when Harry Redknapp was with Portsmouth.
“We worked on putting presentations together for the upcoming game and Michael also gave in-depth analysis on players that the club may have been interested in,” Joe Jordan, Redknapp’s former assistant, said.
“He had a playing career himself and I have always thought he is a good judge of a player. But it is not simply that. There are thousands of players out there and he does his homework.
“Michael doesn’t take any shortcuts. He makes sure when a player has been brought to his attention that he looks into it and gets his facts and figures right. He wants to make sure that if he is putting forward that player to the manager, all the information is in place.”
Edwards followed Redknapp and Jordan to Tottenham Hotspur as head of performance analysis. There he struck up a relationship with Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, and was asked to reshape, and run, the entire department.
He was subsequently headhunted by Damien Comolli, Liverpool’s first sporting director, in 2012. Promotions to the role of director of technical performance, and then technical director, followed by August 2015 and he became sporting director in November of the following year.
Part of the 39-year-old’s remit is Liverpool’s medium and long-term strategy, with his brief including scouting, the academy, medical, research, player liaison and performance analysis. He is the key figure at Melwood to whom staff turn without knocking on Klopp’s door every five minutes.
The system has not always run smoothly. Tensions with Brendan Rodgers led to disharmony and mistakes — the success of Coutinho’s arrival undermined, for example, by the signing of Christian Benteke for £32.5 million from Aston Villa in 2015.
An improvement owes much to Klopp, who was accustomed to working with a sporting director at Borussia Dortmund, embracing a policy that has three fundamental rules.
First, a player will not be signed if the manager does not want him and, second, the owner, Fenway Sports Group, has the right to say no. So, if the manager wants to buy a 29-year-old for £40 million and FSG does not want to spend that amount on someone whose career could be dead in the water in three years’ time, then that is its choice.
The final tenet relates to constantly keeping up to date with the transfer market, spotting opportunities and assessing availability, which in turn guides purchases and sales.
The evolution of FSG’s transfer strategy, a switch from targeting potential to proven talent and embracing the financial demands attuned to that, has also been transformative, although whether the club would have signed Alisson Becker for £65 million had Nabil Fekir not failed a medical on a £53 million transfer from Lyons is unclear.
There is still a difference between spending money and spending wisely though. Liverpool have also sold well.
Their three-year spend from 2016 to the summer of 2018 is £390 million. Sales from the same period have raised £265 million, bringing a net spend of £125 million. Estimated net spend figures over the same period put United at £300 million, Manchester City £358 million and Arsenal £140 million.
For United, the way forward feels complicated.
Mourinho does not appear to be averse to receiving more help. His comments on the signing of Diogo Dalot, the exciting right back, struck a chord following on from the praise handed to the West Ham United scout behind the signing of Issa Diop after he starred in United’s 3-1 September defeat at the London Stadium.
“I’m not a scout,” Mourinho said. “I have no chance to do that. I can do it with Dalot because he is Portuguese. I can control that market pretty well. He’s a player with fantastic potential.”
The sporting director model cannot prosper if the incumbent is simply the manager’s man because then he becomes another salary with little value.
“Michael is brilliant at taking all of the information from the scouts who have been watching games, all the analytics, and pulling that together,” one source familiar with the Liverpool set-up said.
“But his character means he can be quite argumentative as well and that’s healthy.
“He will stand his ground if he really believes in something: ‘Here are the three targets. I know you like that one better, but let us show why you might want to think about this.’
“It is not to be disrespectful but he will say [to the manager], ‘You are wrong’. You need arguments to get the best for club. The role is not about just agreeing with everything.”
This challenges the image of laptop geek and Klopp has publicly acknowledged the recruitment team that pushed for him to sign Salah in the summer of 2017 before and after his preferred option, Bayer Leverkusen’s Julian Brandt, opted against a move to Merseyside.
After ups and downs, Liverpool are clearly benefiting from a framework painstakingly put in place and United must decide how long they can wait before following suit.
“Nowadays it is different to 20 years ago,” Jordan said. “Then, the manager, or coach, would finish training, jump in a car and pop up to Lancashire, for example, to look at a player.
“It doesn’t happen as much now because that player is playing for Cologne or in Buenos Aires. The work that gets done in the background is enormous to try and ensure the manager can do his job on the training pitch with the players he wants.
“Michael is very professional and does the job properly.”
Edwards is on a rolling contract. He is happy at Liverpool, but it might be worth updating with an anti-United clause.
The key figures in Liverpool’s think-tank
Jürgen Klopp
Liverpool manager
The German is receptive to the sporting director model. His office is opposite that of Edwards.
Mike Gordon
The Fenway Sports Group president
He and Edwards are in daily contact.
Dave Fallows
Head of recruitment
His strengths lie in strategy and he manages the scouting department on a daily basis.
Barry Hunter
Chief scout
He was behind the signings of Joe Gomez from Charlton Athletic for £3.5 million and the highly-rated 16-year-old Ki-Jana Hoever, who joined from Ajax in September. He arrived from Manchester City with Fallows in 2012.
Ian Graham
Director of research
He heads up a team of four PHD graduates with backgrounds ranging in astrophysics to physics and advanced maths. Responsible for all data that helps to drive decision making.
Julian Ward
Oversees care of players on loan
Other clubs have now created similar positions and adopted similar deal concepts from Liverpool with cost of loan decreasing as appearances rise.
