Liverpool's former director of research, Ian Graham, spent over a decade at Anfield and was involved in discussions deciding between Darwin Nunez and Alexander Isak.

The Reds bought Nunez for an initial fee of £64million, which could reach as high as a then-club-record £85m, but they were mulling over whether Isak would have been the better option at the time.

In the summer of 2022, Isak had scored just six La Liga goals for Real Sociedad across an entire season, down from 17 the previous campaign.

Nunez, meanwhile, had bagged nearly a goal per game for Benfica and was one of the hottest prospects on the market.

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Liverpool opted for Nunez and Newcastle bought the dip on Isak, albeit at £63m, with the Swede since doubling his direct rival striker’s goal tally in the Premier League.

But their situations could have been drastically different, as Graham detailed that former Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp was the deciding factor and swayed the decision to sign Nunez rather than Isak.

“Jurgen created a lot of success for the club, so it’s understandable why it moved in that direction,” Graham told the Financial Times.

“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.

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


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