Brendan Rodgers transfer culture at Liverpool offers Celtic gripes clue as data guru admits Andy Robertson doubts

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."

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