Ian Graham was part of a group led by Jurgen Klopp that used every innovation they could in pursuit of ‘the best team the world’s ever seen’.
Gavin Cooney IAN GRAHAM FOUND himself in a room at Liverpool ’s old Melwood training ground, looking across a table at the silent, impassive face of John Henry.
Henry, who took over as the owner of Liverpool in 2010, had previously purchased the Boston Red Sox, whom he revived under the principles of Moneyball. “Now it’s completely turned around in the last few years to say that data departments are full of geniuses, that they do this magic stuff and we can’t believe the complexity of it. That’s all wrong as well. There are smart people working at clubs, but for the most part they are just smart people, not geniuses, and it’s hard work.
To find that edge in the market, Graham needed to find a way of identifying a good player, and so he developed a system to rate players’ qualities, which then allowed them to be ranked among hundreds of others in the same position. When the ball is on the edge of the opposition box he estimated that 1,000 instances would yield 17 goals – a goal probability of 1.7%.
Graham says the key to its success at Liverpool was its implementation – the club insisted on the importance of using his data. This came from Henry down. Aside from Brentford and Brighton, whom Graham lauds, very few rival clubs were so insistent on using the data at their hands in every key decision.
That is also an insight into the shortest answer to the question posed in the title to Graham’s book.Liverpool’s “transfer committee” was derided by the media during Brendan Rodgers’ time as manager, but Graham explains that nothing actually changed when Klopp came in beyond the fact that he was able to deliver the club their first-choice targets. With Rodgers, Liverpool were left shopping further down their list.
It’s a fascinating element in all of this: Liverpool’s data department could identify Klopp as the right candidate, but not even Graham could quantify his personality. “I’ve had shouting matches with Michael and with the scouting department,” he says. “I’ve been wrong on many occasions, they’ve been wrong on many occasions. They were kind of positive arguments because we always wanted to make the right decision. Michael certainly had those arguments with Jurgen as well.
“Similarly with Michael, he’s a football expert, he spends a lot of time watching players on video. Sometimes he couldn’t believe when he’d log onto the system and the player was just above average for the Premier League, and won’t make a difference to Liverpool. ‘Like, how the fuck can you be saying this about this player? I’ve watched him and he’s gonna be a star!’Eventually, the arguments all became too wearing on all involved.
Graham now runs his own sports consultancy business, Ludonautics. He remains excited about the possibilities of applying data to football and his message is spreading: a friend at the London School of Economics has published a paper saying data analysis is more useful in football than the stock market, as it’s less unpredictable.
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