Two key members of Liverpool's transfer committee who oversaw the misplaced spending of £110m last summer are under threat in an end-of-season review where the club's American owners will seek explanations for a disappointing campaign.
With Brendan Rodgers' position thought to be under no immediate threat and no preliminary soundings having been made to alternative managerial candidates, the fiercest scrutiny is thought to be falling on the club's head of recruitment, Dave Fallows, and Michael Edwards, the director of performance analysis.
Their statistically driven approach to recruitment has been a key factor in a transfer market strategy which saw the club spend lavishly last summer on players who have not materially improved the squad.
Fallows was brought in from Manchester City, where his role entailed assigning scouts to targets, preparing recommendations based on their work and building a database of players. Edwards was hired by Liverpool as “head of analytics” by Damien Comolli, the director of football who was released in 2012 and had worked alongside the Frenchman in a role as head of performance at Tottenham.
The two men running the player acquisition department and chief scout Barry Hunter do not take sole responsibility for the disastrous summer of spending.
FSG are thought to feel the same point of principle applies to the retention of Raheem Sterling at Liverpool as when Luis Suarez was agitating to leave two years ago. The owners are prepared to make Sterling a marginal part of the next campaign, on his current £35,000-a-week salary if necessary.
But while Suarez's desperate desire to play football ensured that he knuckled down, the owners could not be as certain about any such response from Sterling. – The Independent