Daniel Sturridge admits that Liverpool persuaded him to sign for them in January 2012 thanks to their ‘Moneyball’ transfer strategy – an idea that has now become commonplace within football, but was in its infancy over a decade ago.
Despite having won the Champions League a few months earlier with Chelsea, Sturridge struggled to get into Roberto Di Matteo’s plans at Stamford Bridge – though Liverpool were confident the Englishman’s underlying numbers would ultimately come to fruition.
“It was in how they relayed their plan to me of what they wanted to do and what they wanted to achieve,” Sturridge tells FourFourTwo. “They talked a lot about the statistics; the Moneyball type of thing. I think I was one of the first players, if not the first, that they’d signed with that in mind, which was all based on stats.
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“Things such as conversion rates – they were like, ‘You don’t get many opportunities, but when you play, you score, and also this and this, and we’ve seen this other thing, too’. I was like, ‘This whole thing you’ve put up in front of me is blowing my mind a little bit’. I really liked the way they were thinking.
“The manager, Brendan Rodgers, was a forward-thinking, attacking, free-flowing coach as well, so it just made perfect sense, because I wasn’t playing every game prior to that.”
Sturridge continues, highlighting that his lack of game time at Chelsea – in the first half of the 2012/13 season, he had played just 161 Premier League minutes – contributed to his decision to leave Stamford Bridge.
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Sturridge flourished once he made his Liverpool move (Image credit: Getty Images)
“I’ve always been someone who isn’t content being at a big team simply to be there,” he adds. “I want to play. If that means leaving to play for somebody else, so be it. So, when Liverpool came, it was like, ‘This is an unbelievable football club and if they want me, I’m going’.”
Sturridge went onto form a deadly partnership with Luis Suarez at Anfield, scoring 10 goals in 14 games in the second half of the season. The campaign afterwards, in 2013/14, Liverpool almost managed to win the Premier League title with Sturridge and Suarez up front.
While they ultimately came up short, Sturridge was included in the PFA Team of the Year to vindicate his decision to swap London for Merseyside.
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