Richard Hughes' 7-word transfer promise explains Liverpool's Federico Chiesa move

Liverpool’s former head of research Ian Graham has recently written a book, How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football’s Data Revolution . He talks about his time at the club and his role in helping the Reds become champions of everywhere.

Much of his work related to new signings, some of whom inevitably didn’t hit the heights he or the Reds hoped. “Thinking back on our experiences at Liverpool, I came up with the following list of possible explanations why a player’s transfer may not succeed,” Graham wrote, before listing eight.

The first of them was: “the player may suffer injuries.” Despite this factor, the strongest transfer link relating to Liverpool at present concerns Federico Chiesa. Per Flashscore , he has suffered 20 separate injury absences in the last five years. But while a move for him might contradict one of Graham’s mantras, it fits perfectly with a view expressed by sporting director Richard Hughes in Arne Slot’s first press conference .

READ MORE: Federico Chiesa's concerning injury history and full extent of Liverpool's transfer gamble

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Chiesa was first linked to Liverpool in 2019, at which time he played for Fiorentina. In the opinion of Transfermarkt, his market value at that point was $67m (£51m/€60m). By the summer of 2021 he had moved to Juventus and held his career peak value of $78m (£59m/€70m).

A combination of injuries and falling our of favor with Juve manager Thiago Motta mean Chiesa is now valued at $39m (£30m/€35m). As he has entered the final year of his contract, he is reportedly available for just $17m (£13m/€15m).

This means that Liverpool can potentially sign a player it has supposedly tracked for half a decade for a little over one fifth of what he was theoretically worth just three years ago. Chiesa is not a grizzled veteran either – at 26 years of age, his best years may even be ahead of him.

Equally, his injury history makes that unlikely. It also means Liverpool would be taking a sizeable risk on a player who currently commands an annual salary of $10m (£8m/€9m) in Turin.

But think back to Hughes’ words from his and Slot’s debut presser: "we’ll always be opportunistic if we can.” How often does a team get the chance to sign a 51-cap Euro 2021 winner with 266 Serie A appearances under his belt for less than it received from Brentford for the combined talents of Fábio Carvalho and Sepp van den Berg ?

Don’t answer, it’s ‘not very often’. There is undoubtedly a chance that Chiesa’s fitness problems mean he fails at Liverpool, but it would be suitably opportunistic to pick him up for relative peanuts if it is a possibility. We will have to see if Hughes has read Graham's book or not.