Liverpool are due to fly to Italy this week, with the Reds scheduled to face Inter Milan in the knockout stages of the Champions League on Wednesday night.
Alisson Becker and Mohamed Salah will be returning to the country in which they thrived before securing high-profile moves to Anfield, with both players showcasing their ability in Serie A.
The duo are commonly regarded as world-class in the footballing world but when Liverpool signed them, they seemed to be drifting under the radar compared to other star names.
The Merseyside recruitment team had virtually no competition to battle against when chasing Salah's signature, and the same can largely be said about Alisson, although Chelsea and Real Madrid were rumoured to admire the Brazilian goalkeeper.
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Liverpool's data-driven approach to scouting is famed. The club are known for focusing on analytics and placing more of a value on numbers than rival institutions. Salah and Alisson both showed up as highly influential in the Italian top-flight.
In his final season in Italy, Salah posted 15 goals and 11 assists in Serie A from a starting wide position. He averaged 0.95 goals plus assists per 90 - excluding penalties - which essentially suggested that he contributed with roughly one goal involvement per game.
Only two Serie A players posted better averages that year: Dries Mertens of Napoli and Edin Dzeko, Salah's teammate at AS Roma. The former was aged 29 at the time, and the latter was aged 30.
Salah, by contrast, was just 24 years-old. Meanwhile, Jurgen Klopp was in the process of constructing his new attack at Liverpool, with Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino forming a deadly duo.
With the Egyptian added to the squad - who is left-footed - Klopp would have two pacey wide forwards and a false nine at his disposal, with those three players set to form a notorious trio over the next few years, winning the Premier League and Champions League.
During Salah's first season for the Reds, Alisson also experiencing his first in Italy, having transferred from Internacional in his home country to AS Roma for around £7m.
He spent just one year in Serie A before following the path of Salah to Merseyside, but that sole campaign was remarkable and his performances can be captured using the numbers that Liverpool's recruitment team might have consulted.
It is difficult to truly capture the influence of a goalkeeper, but Expected Goals (xG) can be applied in order to gauge some form of understanding.
xG offers an insight into the likelihood of an attempt being scored by considering aspects such as shot location, and it tends to provide an accurate summary of whether a team deserved fewer or more goals based on their shots.
Post-shot xG can be applied to goalkeepers as it specifically focuses on shots that hit the target and takes into account the quality and trajectory of the shot, thus relating to shot-stopping.
Alisson was expected to concede around 38.8 goals in Serie A based on the shots on target that he faced in 2017/18, but the South American actually shipped just 28, excluding own goals.
That essentially means that he saved shots to an above average standard, overperforming expectation by an impressive 10.8 goals.
Across Europe's top five leagues, Valencia's Neto was the only goalkeeper to overperform by more than Alisson, who placed second ahead of Atletico Madrid's Jan Oblak in third and Burnley's Nick Pope in fourth.
Unlike Neto who was 28 years-old, Alisson was aged 24 and seemed to be available in the transfer market. Liverpool are likely to have considered far more advanced data than what is publicly available, but the Brazilian international seemed to be elite.
Since, both Alisson and Salah have justified Liverpool's initial interest. The pair are now integral to Klopp's outfit and as they return to Italy on Wednesday afternoon, they will be central to any Reds success in Milan.
