Alex Ferguson was shooting the breeze with ex-Republican congressman turned news broadcaster Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, recently. That's the kind of thing Fergie gets up to these days.
Scarborough is an ardent Liverpool fan, a detail he mentioned about 7,000 times in the course of the interview.
In the course of the interview, Fergie and Joe discussed the recently sacked Brendan Rodgers, juxtaposing the dictatorial control Fergie enjoyed with 'the committee' whom Brendan had to work with.
There's a lot of this happening now. This Moneyball thing. Brentford, Brighton, Aston Villa, a lot of them are doing this thing. I'm not sure that's the right way ahead. I think you've got to trust your manager. Why are you appointing him in the first place? He is young Brendan, obviously. But he's enough knowledge to decide what he needs for his team. The type of player he needs for his team. You have to trust him really. And I had that trust at United.
That Liverpool are owned by John W Henry, who even featured as a character in 'Moneyball' in his other role as Boston Red Sox owner, has only fuelled the narrative.
In conversation with Ken Early at the Web Summit today, Ian Ayre tried to puncture the myth of Liverpool's all-powerful transfer committee, insisting that Jurgen Klopp, and before him Brendan Rodgers, had the final say on transfers.
Liverpool CEO Ian Ayre tries to kill off myths about all-powerful 'transfer committees' at #websummitpic.twitter.com/JMGmnvyN0j
— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) November 3, 2015
The whole 'transfer committee' talk was overblown. No player was brought in without Brendan Rodger's agreement.
The word 'transfer committee got used once and became this idea that we all sit around a table and have a vote on every player we sign. That couldn't be further from the truth.
There's only person who has the final say on players at Liverpool FC, and right now that's Jurgen Klopp; that's always been the case. Certainly all the time I've been at the club.
Brendan had the final say on all the players we signed. The point that's being made when we say committee, and I don't think we do anything differently to most football clubs, the manager will say 'I want someone in that position'.
We have a bunch of different people, and that's a mix of traditional scouting that everyone's aware of, and more recently, more analytical and more digital based information.
