How failed Liverpool transfer in 2013 led to eventual Premier League title as £8.5m turning point revealed

Former Head of Research at Liverpool Ian Graham has revealed in his new book how a failed deal for Blackpool’s Tom Ince in 2013 led to the club’s resounding success almost half a decade later.

Graham, who worked at Liverpool between the years of 2012 and 2023, released his book titled ‘How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football’s Data Revolution’ on August 15. The book details his work across Liverpool’s transfers and how data helped to revolutionise their business - and how it helped the club to land several key players who went onto become stars and bring trophies to Anfield.

While the book is full of incredible tales of transfer deals, one of the most poignant reveals is that the club had initially looked to sign Blackpool attacker Tom Ince in January 2013 before settling on Phillipe Coutinho. Ince was originally a Liverpool academy graduate before he left for Blackpool in 2011. However, after impressing in the Championship (he had 12 goal contributions in the first seven games in the 2012/13 season) the club wanted to re-sign him under Brendan Rogers.

While that deal fell through, Liverpool opted for the £8.5m signing of Coutinho from Inter Milan: in what was a sliding doors moment for the club’s future successes. In what was a bargain at the time, the young Brazilian eased his way into English football before becoming a key figure across the next five-and-a-half seasons. He grew from teenage prodigy to one of the league’s best attackers and his eventual rise saw him join Barcelona for a record £142m fee.

We all know what happened next; his sale allowed the club to go and spend that money on Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk who have both been credited as being the ‘game-changers’ that elevated Liverpool from top four challengers to Champions League and Premier League champions. While speaking to the Athletic to promote his new book, he claimed Graham viewed it as vindication for the club’s approach to recruitment. “Mike Gordon, Michael Edwards, myself and the rest of the transfer committee always had the belief the process would pay off if we could get all the parts working properly,” Graham says. “Our personalities were similar in not caring about the outside noise and sticking to a long-term view. The first guy I ever hired to my team, I told him ‘I’m not going to say this is a job for life; if we’re still here after two years we’re doing well’.

“I think at most clubs with those failures in the first few years, they would have gone in another direction. But Fenway knew the process was working. They could see that a department was being created which would give us an edge over other clubs in the future. It was just that the rest of the world couldn’t see it at that time.”