Scouting Forwards: What Do You Want?

The first instalment of a series dedicated to finding a new forward Liverpool.

Here we go. Transfer season is back, which means every player under the sun is going to be linked with a move to Anfield over the next few months.

To kickstart the upcoming opening of the window, I’m going to dedicate a series to scouting players, specifically forwards from across Europe’s big seven leagues. Yeah, I’m including the Eredivie this time. Lesson learnt.

According to The Athletic’s David Ornstein, Liverpool are searching for a ‘wide player’ this summer. Now, to be fair, that could be a full-back for all we know. The label is extremely vague, which doesn’t help us a lot.

Then you realise we’ve got a new manager and a new sporting director in charge, potentially with a new formation set to be adopted next term, which again makes things even trickier.

So before we delve into the data to assess our options, we need to have a think about what we want from any incoming player.

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First of all, let’s assume this ‘wide player’ is a forward. That feels like a pretty safe call. Second, it’s reasonable to suggest this player has to be aged 26 or under, based purely on the business conducted by the Reds over the past decade.

His current contract also has to be realistic — especially in terms of length — otherwise he’s not going to be attainable. We’ve been linked with Levi Colwill of late, for example. Lads, his current deal runs until 2029. Chelsea have got him until the end of time. I doubt that one is happening.

But enough with the laborious stuff. Perhaps more importantly for the likes of Arne Slot, we need to identify what we want from this wide player in a stylistic sense.

Every wide man does not fit under the same umbrella. We’re dealing with all different shapes and sizes here. Mohamed Salah, for example, is your signature inside forward who will penetrate the penalty box and get shots. He plays on the flanks, but he’s still the tip of your spear.

Then you’ve got a player like Jérémy Doku, who stretches the pitch horizontally and dribbles, but does virtually nothing else. David Beckham is different again, painting himself as a technical crosser and expert from set-pieces, with a wicked delivery attached to his game.

Jack Grealish doesn’t score much, and he doesn’t actually dribble that much, either. He adds most of his value by carrying the ball into the box and winning fouls, while also possessing this innate gravity which attract opponents and generates space for his teammates.

One more? Cool. Sometimes your wide man isn’t fast, and he doesn’t score that much, but he’s probably your most creative player. Harvey Elliott is a decent example here, or possibly Michael Olise. When he plays wide right for the Reds, he kills you with his vision and incision.

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So what do you want? We all know what Jürgen Klopp wanted, but that could change now that he’s left. This is a new era, so it’s not clear what we’re going to do.

Nevertheless, if there’s one thing that has been established this year, it’s that Michael Edwards has control of the castle again, appointing Richard Hughes to occupy the role that he once mastered.

Slot was officially announced by Liverpool over the weekend, with the club using the term ‘head coach’ in their press release. In other words, this guy is going to coach the team.

He’ll obviously contribute to recruitment, but the true extent of his power remains to be seen. The suits and the nerds are probably going to do the majority of the work moving forward, which is why the words of Ian Graham feel very relevant right now.

If you’ve been following my Substack since the start, you’ll be aware of this quote by now. From an interview with ESPN, for those who missed it:

“A scout or a coach would say, ‘Why do we like this forward?’ His analytics team would respond, ‘He takes loads of really good shots.’ The scout or coach would counter, ‘Yeah, but does he drive inside enough? Does he bring his teammates into play enough?’

‘But we're playing them up front,’ Graham said. ‘He takes loads of good quality shots. There is literally nothing else to say. All other arguments, they're second-order effects compared to this. But people love to mystify and bring more and more factors into play. A use of the data is just to say: This is the important thing and we might be wrong about it — we sometimes are wrong — but you have to come up with some really good arguments against this one really important thing.’”

That’s literally from the horse’s mouth, the guy who built Liverpool’s renowned data science department from scratch. In essence, he’s saying if you’re a forward playing in the final third, pretty much everything except the ability to get shots is noise.

So if you’re going to sign a forward, even if he’s playing out wide, the most important thing is whether he’s delivering with product. Even if Slot demands a dribbler for those one-on-one situations. Cool, we’ll bear that in mind, but he needs to have product attached to his game. That is the top priority.

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Aside from his stylistic preferences, we also need to determine where this player is going to perform. Every forward has a preferred flank, and that matters a lot. Ole Gunnar Solskjær proved that with Jadon Sancho.

Upon inspection of Liverpool’s squad, it’s difficult to determine what the guys upstairs might be thinking. On the right side, you’ve got Salah, who starts every single week. The Reds have never shown much of an interest in signing a support act for him, because what’s the point?

On the other hand, he’ll turn 32 years old later this month. And he’s only got one year left on his contract. So maybe now more than ever, players who favour the right side are attractive to us, which also opens up the prospect of Liverpool signing a left footer, too.

For what it’s worth, without Salah, Elliott is the only player in the entire squad who favours his left foot, excluding Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas, of course. You might need to think about that dynamic if you’re searching for a new wide man.

On the other side of the pitch, you’ve currently got four lads who can play there, and two who want to play there in Cody Gakpo and Luis Díaz, with the latter being 27 years old and attracting interest from abroad.

So overall, you can sign a player who favours Salah’s spot, but he might not play that much until the Egyptian leaves, or you can sign somebody for the left side, which probably opens up the chances of Díaz leaving inside the next 12 months.

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All things considered, whether we chase a player for the left or the right flank, the ideal candidate is probably capable of doing both. Sadio Mané, for example, spent his first season on Merseyside playing on the right, before moving to the left when Salah joined. He was a dream.

The ideal candidate is also aged 26 or under, and his contract is due to expire inside the next two or three years, although we can be a bit flexible on that depending on the player in question.

He needs to have output. That comes first, above everything else. Beyond that, I think it’s safe to say we’d like a player with speed who is capable on the dribble in one-on-one situations. Slot created plenty of those scenarios for his wide men in Rotterdam.

In the next edition of this series, we’ll delve deeper into the process to determine who is good enough to make Liverpool’s shortlist.