Liverpool rejected chance to sign Alexander Isak as £85m transfer decision explained

Liverpool rejected chance to sign Alexander Isak as £85m transfer decision explained

Liverpool signed Darwin Nunez in the summer of 2022 while Alexander Isak joined Newcastle United that same transfer window

Newcastle United striker Alexander Isak was wanted by Liverpool three years ago (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images )

Liverpool's former director of research Ian Graham has claimed Jurgen Klopp chose to sign Darwin Nunez over Alexander Isak three years ago. And he has also explained the key metric that saw the Reds pursue Ibrahima Konate in 2021.

Liverpool broke their transfer record to land Nunez from Benfica in a deal worth a potential £85m in June 2022. Klopp landed the striker for an initial £64m with a further £21m in add-ons in the summer after Sadio Mane had left for Bayern Munich.

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Nunez scored 18 goal in Klopp's final season in charge, building on the 15 he registered in his maiden term on Merseyside. But the Uruguay international struggled for game-time last time out under Arne Slot, starting just one Premier League fixture in 2025, at home to relegated Southampton in March.

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Nunez is wanted by Serie A champions Napoli and the Reds are open to offers for the 25-year-old, who scored five league goals last season.

And in an interview with the Financial Times, Dr Graham explained how the club's research department were talking up the talents of Isak, then of Real Sociedad, who moved to Newcastle United that same summer for £63m.

Isak, who has been a huge success at Newcastle, has been linked with a move to Liverpool this summer.

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"Jurgen created a lot of success for the club, so it’s understandable why it moved in that direction," Dr Graham says. "I’m happy to talk about my colleagues persuading Jurgen [in 2017] that Mo Salah was the player to buy instead of Julian Brandt.

"In 2022, he signed Darwin Nunez instead of Alexander Isak. Both players, if you look at top young centre-forwards in Europe, they would be number one and two - or two and three but [Erling] Haaland was going to [Manchester] City and out of our price range.

"Jurgen preferred Nunez. It would be very churlish of me to say: 'It’s terrible that Jurgen had his choice', when in the past Jurgen had been persuaded by me and my colleagues of a different choice.

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"And it was still the case that we signed good players - in Nunez’s case, one of the best young strikers in Europe."

Dr Graham, who stepped down as the club's director of research at the end of the 2022-23 term, also revealed why Konate was a target at RB Leipzig in the summer of 2021, adding: "The most difficult position to analyse [from data] is centre-back.

"They’re the most off-ball. So Ibrahima Konate had a much higher rating in our tracking model than in our event model. Why? Because Leipzig plays suicide football and he has to defend half a pitch five times a game.

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"So the event model is saying: 'So much danger is coming through Konate'. The tracking model can see, well, he’s literally the only player in his zone.

"It leaves us a more sophisticated understanding of what matters and who’s good. You can ask: 'Is this player consistently picking what we consider to be the high-value option?'

"The event data can’t see the other options. Tracking data lifts the lid on it all and says: 'This is exactly what the player had in front of him'."

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