It has been revealed that Sadio Mane could well have been a Liverpool player if he had not failed the Merseyside club's then computerised transfer selection process.

It has been revealed that Sadio Mane was a target for Liverpool in the summer of 2014 before he joined Saints, but the Anfield club pulled out at the last minute after his statistics did not impress the club's computer.

Famously Liverpool have used a "Moneyball" approach to signing players since FSG took over the reigns, this refers to a system worked well in Baseball in the USA and now increasingly being used by football clubs in Europe including Saints.

However apparently Liverpool took the system to the extreme, football unlike Baseball does rely a lot more on other factors than pure statistics, but over the past few years Liverpool have failed to recognise this.

This meant that although all their scouting reports were raving about Mane, when they inputted his details and stats into their computer it came back as a fail and they pulled out of signing him for the same fee of 15 million euros that Saints paid a few weeks later.

Now apparently Liverpool have admitted defeat in the total reliability of accepting the computers word as the final say and Jurgen Klopp only took the job at Anfield on the basis that he would have the final say.

According to some media sources quoting German Journalist Raphael Honigstein of Sport1 about the reason Liverpool cooled their interest in Mane at the last minute, Liverpool had become well known in footballing circles for their reliance on their computer and this was harming their prospects of signing the top players as agents were loathe to get involved in contract talks knowing that Liverpool might pull out late on because their computer said NO !

Liverpool's loss was Saints gain and given Mane's record of scoring against Liverpool this season and the fact that if you took away his three Premier league goals against the Red's they would now sit only two points behind 4th placed Manchester City with two games in hand, perhaps someone might be putting their boot through the computer's screen come the end of the season.

Photo: Action Images

bstokesaint added 15:07 - Apr 2 Give me a break. You make them sound sophisticated. A child-friendly database could kick out a search result of those with a profession in football who have SO in their home postcode.
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