That is an up to date model of an article first printed in June 2020.
Maybe the perfect place to begin is the story Harry Redknapp tells when he’s requested about Michael Edwards and the outstanding chain of occasions that first took a pissed off IT instructor from Peterborough to a place of energy and affect at Liverpool.
Redknapp had been Portsmouth supervisor when Edwards — or ‘Eddie’, as he’s generally recognized — was given his huge break in soccer and, over a decade since they final labored collectively, he received again in contact some time in the past to request a favour.
“I’d met a man who had just a few weeks to reside,” Redknapp says. “This poor man was in his early forties. He had been married solely a few years and he knew he was dying. Somebody had received in contact and mentioned, ‘Harry, he’d love to satisfy you. He’s soccer mad’. So I went spherical to his home one Sunday and spent a few hours with him, his spouse and his in-laws. He was an incredible boy, so robust, and he informed me it was his dream to go to Liverpool.
“I rang Michael Edwards and, immediately, he went, ‘Harry, not an issue’. I organized a automotive, I received a driver. Eddie sorted every part else. There wasn’t any of the, ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry, mate, you understand how busy I’m’, which you could get typically.
“He put himself out, he organised the complete day and handled him extremely. We now have to recollect we’re able the place we are able to make a distinction to individuals’s lives. Sadly, this man died 4 or 5 weeks later. Eddie had received him into the administrators’ field, launched him to everyone — Kenny Dalglish, Jurgen Klopp — the boy had the perfect day of his life. Cherished each minute of it.”
It was all achieved with no publicity, after all, as a result of Edwards had a strict understanding with Liverpool that, so far as the media are involved, he would quite preserve everybody an extended arm’s distance away and talk about as commonly as Chief Bromden in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Edwards was the sporting director who recognized Klopp as supervisor and introduced in, amongst others, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Alisson and Virgil van Dijk.
It was the gathering of gamers that helped Liverpool finish their 30-year anticipate a league title and turned a drifting big into the champions of England, Europe and the world, surpassing even the achievements of the membership’s sides from the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties.
But the paradox, at a time when one of many banners on the Kop learn “Champions of All the things”, was that Edwards didn’t actually have a Wikipedia web page. In the event you typed in his identify, the primary outcome was that of an ex-pro from Notts County.
Lots has modified since then for the College of Sheffield graduate, who has simply been persuaded to return to Fenway Sports activities Group, Liverpool’s American proprietor, almost two years since leaving the membership. Edwards will likely be returning to a brand new, larger position as FSG’s director of soccer operations.
He could have a outstanding say in selecting Klopp’s successor and his affect will shortly develop into obvious when he brings in Richard Hughes, previously Bournemouth’s technical director, to fill the vacant sporting director place at Anfield. Liverpool, as soon as once more, will likely be counting on Edwards to work his magic behind the scenes.
There was an extended interval, nevertheless, in his first spell on Merseyside that the one {photograph} of Edwards within the media’s possession got here from a Simply Giving fundraising web page for the 2018 Manchester half-marathon, for which the listing of donations included £5,000 from a sure Mr J Klopp. Edwards might freely stroll round Anfield with out anyone recognising him and that was precisely how he appreciated it.
Jurgen Klopp, FSG president Mike Gordon (centre) and Michael Edwards (John Powell/Liverpool FC through Getty Pictures)
“He isn’t probably the most stereotypical soccer director,” Redknapp says. “Actually, he’s most likely probably the most un-stereotypical. You received’t usually see him in a swimsuit. He isn’t a go-getting, big-personality type of man. You take a look at him, he used to have this spiky hair… a really inoffensive, quiet man. You’d most likely suppose he needs to be standing behind the aim.”
Don’t be mistaken, although. Others speak about Edwards as a fiercely pushed, clever and bold particular person who possesses the streak of ruthlessness that’s usually required to succeed in the highest in soccer.
Edwards has upset just a few individuals alongside the best way and was one of many three members of workers from Anfield cited within the alleged hacking of Manchester Metropolis’s scouting system in 2013. Liverpool supplied a £1million ($1.3m at at this time’s charges) settlement, together with a legally binding confidentiality settlement, to cease the matter going any additional. As relations between the 2 golf equipment deteriorated over the next decade, Edwards’ presence was one of many causes there was solely a skinny veneer of cordiality at boardroom stage.
Not that Liverpool’s proprietor, John W Henry, or his colleagues at FSG, could have cared too vastly about that element after they lastly received wind that Edwards was, in spite of everything, open to the thought of main the membership into the post-Klopp period.
Edwards was a youth and reserve-team footballer at Peterborough United who by no means totally made the grade and, having been launched on the age of 18, educated to be a instructor earlier than getting his first job in an area highschool. He’s the lorry driver’s son who grew up in Fareham, Hampshire, and developed a fetish for numbers and statistics. The “laptop computer guru” as he was referred to as in a single headline.
There may be one story that ought to make it clear how extremely the 44-year-old is regarded at Anfield. It goes again to the evening — June 25, 2020 — when Manchester Metropolis misplaced 2-1 at Chelsea and the defeat meant Liverpool had received their first title since 1990.
When the ultimate whistle sounded at Stamford Bridge, the Liverpool chairman, Tom Werner, pulled out his cell phone to get in contact with the individuals who had made it occur.
And the primary individual to obtain a congratulatory textual content from Liverpool’s chairman? Klopp, maybe? No, it was Michael Edwards.
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After every part that has occurred since Klopp arrived on Merseyside, it could possibly really feel like a trick of the creativeness that Liverpool gave severe consideration to hiring Eddie Howe quite than the person who, eight and a half years later, counts as Anfield royalty.
Howe was on a three-man shortlist with Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti for the supervisor’s place and it was a part of Edwards’ job, then as Liverpool’s technical director, to find out who had the excellent credentials to switch Brendan Rodgers.
Ancelotti handed all the standards when it comes to his document within the Champions League and the statistics referring to his groups at Juventus, AC Milan, Chelsea and Actual Madrid, however his switch document counted in opposition to him as a result of the system devised by Edwards and Liverpool’s analysts intentionally positioned much less emphasis on a supervisor’s recruitment in his first yr.
Their principle was {that a} supervisor won’t have the last word say when it got here to switch enterprise throughout his first season however, in years two, three, 4 and 5, that supervisor’s affect could be larger and signings wouldn’t occur with out his enter.
Loads of Ancelotti’s recruits have been deemed to be on the older facet and that jarred with Liverpool’s considering. Edwards wished gamers aged 26 or below who have been approaching their peak years and would nonetheless have a re-sale worth three or 4 years later.
Howe, now at Newcastle United, was managing Bournemouth and had a fame for growing youthful gamers and enjoying engaging soccer.
He had additionally been a participant at Portsmouth when Edwards was beginning out on the south coast membership. Their friendship, nevertheless, by no means got here into it. Howe didn’t have the expertise of competing within the Champions League, whereas Klopp ticked each field when it comes to achievement, switch enterprise and enjoying fashion. Edwards made his advice to FSG and left them to get on with the enterprise of constructing it occur.
Since then, maybe the perfect indicator of Edwards’ affect is to contemplate Klopp’s line-up for his first Liverpool recreation — a goalless draw at Tottenham Hotspur on October 17, 2015 — and examine it to the workforce that’s now taking over Manchester Metropolis and Arsenal to win the title.
Simon Mignolet was Liverpool’s goalkeeper that day behind a again 4 of Nathaniel Clyne, Martin Skrtel, Mamadou Sakho and Alberto Moreno. Lucas Leiva, Emre Can and James Milner fashioned the midfield and the entrance three had Adam Lallana and Philippe Coutinho on both facet of Divock Origi. Liverpool’s substitutes have been Adam Bogdan, Kolo Toure, Jerome Sinclair, Joao Carlos Teixeira, Connor Randall, Jordon Ibe and Joe Allen, who by no means did fulfil Rodgers’ description as “the Welsh Xavi”.
Edwards helped Klopp construct nearly a wholly new XI however, initially, he needed to get the arrogance of the supervisor and create a relationship the place they totally understood each other.
“It’s a superb relationship,” Klopp mentioned. “He’s a really considerate individual. We don’t at all times need to be in agreement from the primary second of a dialog, however we end just about all our talks with the identical opinion. Or related opinions.”
It was Edwards, for instance, who pressed Liverpool to signal Salah and satisfied Klopp to ignore the actual fact the Egyptian had struggled beforehand with Chelsea.
Klopp’s desire was mentioned to be Bayer Leverkusen’s Julian Brandt, a future Germany worldwide he knew properly from his time managing Borussia Dortmund, however Edwards continued in his perception that Salah was the higher choice. Klopp listened, took it in and determined to belief his colleague. Salah has since established himself as an genuine Premier League nice and a serial breaker of scoring information.
Edwards’ success can not simply be measured by the gamers Liverpool have signed when a few of his extra spectacular enterprise has revolved across the ones the membership have moved out — and his skill to get some large switch charges.
Coutinho’s £142m switch to Barcelona was the largest deal, however Liverpool additionally raised vital sums by offloading fringe gamers. Ibe and Brad Smith went to Bournemouth for a mixed £21m. Kevin Stewart moved to Hull for £8m. Leicester Metropolis paid £12.5m for Danny Ward and Crystal Palace paid £26m for Sakho.
All this was masterminded, to a big diploma, from Edwards’ first-floor workplace at Liverpool’s coaching floor. His door was at all times open. It was immediately reverse Klopp’s workplace and the poster-sized “Class of Melwood” image on the wall was as a result of yearly your entire workers — from the safety and kitchen staff to the first-team gamers and supervisor — posed for an all-in-it-together {photograph}.
Edwards and Klopp, the older man by 12 years, have been described by one colleague as “kindred spirits”, freely wandering out and in of one another’s places of work. Throughout the switch window, Edwards’ tv could be switched on to point out the rolling information protection. The 2 males swapped opinions, they debated and typically they disagreed. Additionally they spent many lunchtimes enjoying padel after getting hooked on the game throughout a winter coaching camp in Tenerife. They even organized for a courtroom to be constructed on the coaching floor.
Edwards, left, Klopp and FSG president Mike Gordon (John Powell/Liverpool FC through Getty Pictures)
The 2 males, it’s understood, have been now not as shut by the point Edwards introduced his departure within the type of an open letter that shocked many individuals given he had by no means wished to talk publicly earlier than.
“I had at all times deliberate to cap my time on the membership to a most of 10 years,” he wrote. “I’ve beloved working right here, however I’m an enormous believer in change. It’s good for the person and, in a piece setting, good for the employer, too. Over my time right here, we’ve modified so many issues (hopefully for the higher) however somebody new brings a unique perspective, new concepts and may hopefully construct on (or change) the issues which have been put in place beforehand.”
Edwards went on to eulogise about his assistant, Julian Ward, who was taking on as sporting director, whereas praising his different colleagues within the recruitment division as “geniuses… no doubt the perfect of their subject in world soccer.” And Klopp? “Being supervisor of Liverpool might be tougher than enjoying (the shirt hangs heavy, so they are saying), however he has delivered a lot pleasure to the followers and reasserted so lots of the membership’s historic values that he’ll go down in historical past as one of many membership’s managerial greats.”
Rodgers, in distinction, had seen Edwards as a risk to his authority at a time when the workings of Liverpool’s “switch committee” had created all types of politics behind the scenes. It was an ungainly title and an ungainly time. Rodgers was not a fan of the setup and it grew to become a supply of remorse inside Anfield that the membership’s proprietor had ever coined the identify.
In actuality, it was the type of operation that might have been discovered at nearly each main membership, the place there was an understanding that the supervisor was too busy to go on abroad scouting missions himself and develop into embroiled in negotiations that might take months. Edwards was a part of a gaggle that included the then chief government, Ian Ayre, together with the analytics workforce, senior teaching and scouting workers and typically representatives of the membership’s business division.
Rodgers nonetheless had the ability to veto transfers and, early on, was most likely entitled to query Edwards’ information. Liverpool had made a flurry of signings — Iago Aspas, Luis Alberto and Tiago Ilori, to call however three — who handed via Anfield with out making a beneficial affect. Lazar Markovic was the costliest failure, costing £20m, and never everybody appreciated Edwards’ often blunt, very matter-of-fact method.
Markovic price Liverpool over £1m per league look (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC through Getty Pictures)
Scouts have been moved out, some unhappily. Mel Johnson, the talent-spotter who had advisable Jordan Henderson, claimed in a single interview that Liverpool missed out on Dele Alli as a result of the membership relied on their “pc and stats-led” strategy. The game, Johnson complained, was “not performed on a pc”, stating that skilled soccer individuals have been being edged out. “A few of these IT guys have come straight out of college and landed jobs at high golf equipment, regardless of having no soccer background in any way.”
The politics finally contributed to Rodgers, now at Celtic, shedding his job on Merseyside. In the end, although, he may need to simply accept that he underestimated Edwards, notably when it got here to the £29m signing of Roberto Firmino from Hoffenheim.
Rodgers had not been eager on Firmino whereas Edwards and the scouting workforce have been sure the Brazilian could be a super wearer of Liverpool’s colors. Chief scout Barry Hunter had tracked him in Germany and the numbers confirmed how, by being concerned in 45 league objectives within the two seasons as much as 2015, Firmino was the second-highest performing Brazilian in Europe, second solely to Neymar, then at Paris Saint-Germain. Rodgers remained unconvinced and, to start with, Firmino was used on the fitting wing.
But it surely didn’t work out badly. “One of many questions I at all times get requested is: ‘Who was/is your favorite participant?’,” Edwards wrote in his open letter. “That’s a extremely troublesome query to reply, so I received’t even attempt. All I’ll say is my canine is named Bobby.”
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When Barry Fry was requested if he had any explicit recollections of Michael Edwards, the previous Peterborough United supervisor needed to apologise.
“I’m embarrassed to say no,” Fry, now the League One facet’s director of soccer, informed The Athletic. “I don’t keep in mind the boy in any respect, I’m sorry.”
Edwards had been a part of a junior soccer academy in Southampton earlier than being advisable to Peterborough for his or her youth system, happening to signal a two-year apprenticeship at London Street.
“In all probability not probably the most gifted, however he labored onerous,” is the decision of 1 former team-mate. “A correct squad participant, who made the perfect of what he’d received. He was by no means going to be a star however he was at all times fairly reliable. And really intelligent. He was most likely outdated for his time, the best way he thought of every part and the best way he spoke. You would inform he had a very good head on his shoulders.”
Edwards was a right-back who would often be moved right into a holding midfield position and, although he was not considered loud or a shouter, there was one event when he turned on two team-mates and accused them of considering they have been “big-time”.
“There have been two schools within the space,” one other former Peterborough participant says. “A few of us — those who by no means received the higher {qualifications} — went to Huntingdon Faculty. Michael went to Cambridge to do leisure and tourism with the extra clever lads, sooner or later per week. Academically, he was very in a position. On the pitch, you may see he understood the sport.”
It didn’t work out, although. Edwards left Peterborough with out making a first-team look and needed to make a brand new profession for himself. He went again to varsity and enrolled for college, acquiring a level in enterprise administration and informatics. He returned to Peterborough to begin his first instructing job within the city, however colleagues say he missed being round soccer and was not enthused by his new career.
His breakthrough got here in 2003 when Portsmouth agreed to tackle Prozone, the soccer knowledge firm. Different golf equipment had already signed up and Simon Wilson, considered one of Edwards’ former Peterborough team-mates, was within the related division at close by Southampton.
“I mentioned to Simon we had received a contract with Portsmouth and wanted an analyst,” Barry McNeill, then Prozone’s enterprise improvement supervisor, says. “He rolled off just a few names and mentioned, ‘There’s one man I do know who’s most likely not glad the place he’s, why don’t you have got a chat with him?’.”
Edwards was in his early twenties. “We discovered him working as an IT instructor,” McNeill says. “He clearly had fairly low motivation for that vocation. I interviewed him at a service station between Peterborough and the M1. I defined Prozone, confirmed him the know-how and inside a month he was on-site at Portsmouth’s coaching floor.”
Although Edwards won’t have loved instructing, McNeill thinks the expertise hardened him for the soccer enterprise. “The primary few years (of instructing) are the hardest since you are completely out of your depth. You want a backbone. That was most likely nice preparation.”
This was a time when knowledge was nonetheless comparatively new to soccer and, all these years later, it’s unusual to listen to considered one of Edwards’ fellow analysts say that “it was solely the Solar on a Monday that had passing and possession stats”.
Redknapp had been persuaded by his assistant, Jim Smith, that Prozone was price a go. Smith had been the first-ever supervisor to take it on at Derby County. Steve McClaren, considered one of Smith’s assistants at Derby, then took it to Manchester United. Sam Allardyce, then at Bolton Wanderers, was one other advocate. And, as quickly as phrase received out that Sir Alex Ferguson was utilizing it at Previous Trafford, different golf equipment began to comply with.
“I might be in Sam’s (Allardyce) workplace after video games,” McNeill says. “If that they had overwhelmed Portsmouth, Sam would say to Harry, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Why have you ever not received this? Why don’t you have got it? It’s as costly as your least expensive squad participant’. He would nearly embarrass individuals to leap on the bandwagon. Harry would have taken much more of that from his friends and Jim Smith would have been having a phrase in his ear.”
Even so, it took some time for Redknapp to become familiar with it.
“There’s a well-known story the place ‘Eddie’ is attempting to get via to Harry,” considered one of Edwards’ former associates says. “That is folklore in analyst circles. Harry mentioned, ‘Does your pc say we’re going to win at this time?’. Eddie mentioned ‘sure’ fairly flippantly. They misplaced and Harry quipped, ‘Possibly your pc can play subsequent time’. No person even is aware of whether it is true, however all of us repeat it.”
Smith, left, satisfied Redknapp that Prozone was the long run (Matthew Lewis/Getty Pictures)
In Edwards’ early days, Redknapp referred to as to ask why he couldn’t get something out of a CD-ROM crammed with participant knowledge. It turned out Redknapp had put it into the CD participant of his automotive.
Edwards had his personal workplace at Portsmouth and was of an age when he might combine with the gamers with out it seeming uncommon. “On the workforce bus, for instance, he could be with the lads and we’d play Mario Kart,” Gary O’Neil, their former midfielder, says. “You may need an eight-person league and Ed could be in it. He didn’t overstep the road, although. He wouldn’t be on lads’ nights out as a result of he was, technically, workers. We have been good mates and he got here to my wedding ceremony.”
O’Neil, now the supervisor of Wolves, remembers Redknapp by no means beforehand being stats-oriented, however one thing will need to have gone proper as a result of Edwards adopted Portsmouth’s supervisor to Spurs in 2009.
“Michael got here to Portsmouth as a really younger analyst,” Redknapp says. “I keep in mind a large recreation, the yr we stayed up (2005-06), at Fulham. We have been second-bottom and he put this video collectively to play on the coach. He was scared to point out it as a result of it took the mickey out of me. I believed it was an excellent snort. He was a smashing lad and after I went to Tottenham I took him with me.”
Edwards stayed at White Hart Lane for nearly two years earlier than Damien Comolli, then Liverpool’s director of soccer, headhunted him as a part of FSG’s directions to implement a brand new data-led strategy, in step with their administration of baseball’s Boston Crimson Sox.
Comolli had beforehand been at Spurs, whose chairman, Daniel Levy, was dismayed to find Liverpool had taken away one other of their key males.
Spurs had an unique settlement on the time with a knowledge firm referred to as Determination Expertise and Liverpool wished to see if they may muscle in. Edwards, nevertheless, persuaded his new bosses to depart Determination Expertise alone and goal Dr Ian Graham, the information scientist who helped run their operation.
The 2 males have been on the identical flight to an analytics convention in Boston, Massachusetts. It was an eight-hour flight and, 37,000 toes within the air, Edwards satisfied Graham to affix him as Liverpool’s head of analysis. The duty was aided by the actual fact Graham was a boyhood Liverpool supporter. Graham, who held a Cambridge doctorate in theoretical physics, knowledgeable Spurs when he returned to England and that started a working relationship that continues to at the present time.
Graham took a key position at Anfield till quitting in November 2022, Liverpool’s worst season of the Klopp period, to begin his personal enterprise. A few months later, he launched Ludonautics, a sports activities advisory enterprise, and was reunited with the person with whom he had shared so {many professional} highs. Edwards took a consultancy position, giving him a stage of independence that was not at all times there throughout his years at Anfield.
What individuals typically neglect about Klopp’s title-winning season at Anfield is that they did it whereas spending significantly lower than the vast majority of Premier League golf equipment.
Liverpool’s web switch spend of £92.4m from the earlier 5 years was lower than Watford’s, not even half that of Brighton & Hove Albion or Aston Villa and a good bit behind Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United. There was solely Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Southampton and Norwich Metropolis from England’s high division with a decrease web spend in that point. Manchester Metropolis’s whole was £505.6m, Manchester United’s £378.9m. And that, in no small half, was on account of Edwards’ experience.
All of which makes it simpler to grasp why Liverpool have been nearly obsessive of their makes an attempt to influence him to return to the membership.
As one individual with inside information of analytics informed The Athletic in 2020, talking anonymously to guard their relationships: “They’ve barely had a failed signing. I don’t suppose that may proceed, I don’t suppose anybody is that good. In the event you get 15 out of 15 transfers proper, it could possibly’t at all times be that manner. He (Edwards) is over-performing and it’ll regress to a imply in some unspecified time in the future.”
It was actually a far cry from the time, in 2017, when a web-based petition was arrange by a disgruntled Liverpool fan campaigning for Edwards to be sacked. The petition rustled up 36 votes and the primary remark — “he’s ineffective, simply ineffective” — didn’t age properly.
It was Edwards who satisfied Liverpool concerning the potential of Andy Robertson at Hull Metropolis to flourish at the next stage and develop into one of many excellent full-backs in world soccer.
It was Edwards once more who insisted when Barcelona signed Coutinho in 2018 {that a} one-off clause was written into the deal to stipulate that the Catalan membership must pay a £100m premium to signal some other Liverpool participant over the next two years. He knew Barca may come after their elite gamers and had the foresight to verify it couldn’t occur except it meant some mind-boggling sums.
Colleagues speak concerning the interval in 2018 when Edwards had it in thoughts that Actual Madrid, their opponents in that season’s Champions League remaining, may more and more be interested in the thought of signing Salah, Firmino or Mane. Liverpool’s response was to tie all three to new contracts, none with launch clauses.
Michael Edwards (circled) within the 2019 Champions League celebrations (Mike Hewitt/Getty Pictures)
Edwards could be powerful. He was unflinching when Can, coming to the top of his contract, informed the membership he would signal a brand new one however wished a launch clause in it. There was a stand-off. Edwards refused to budge and Can was allowed to depart on a free switch quite than the membership setting a precedent.
What is going to by no means change, it appears, is Edwards’ reticence on the subject of letting us hear what his voice feels like.
“You’d by no means think about the man sat within the tiny Prozone portakabin at Portsmouth would go on to be the man who performs such an enormous position on the greatest membership on the planet,” says O’Neil.
Good luck, too, looking for a photograph of Edwards on the pitch with the Champions League trophy from the evening Liverpool beat Tottenham to develop into six-time European Cup winners, including Madrid, 2019, to the listing of Istanbul, 2005, in addition to Rome, 1977 and 1984, plus Wembley, 1978, and Paris, 1981.
Klopp invited all his workers onto the rostrum to affix within the celebrations. Edwards, nevertheless, most well-liked to maintain to the perimeters and take images of the jubilant Liverpool supporters. He consoled a few of his former colleagues from Tottenham, together with Levy, and helped make sure that Liverpool’s package man received an image with the trophy.
Then the quiet man of Anfield disappeared into the background, simply the best way he likes it.
(High images: Michael Edwards, left, and John W Henry; by Getty Pictures)
