There was widespread surprise and no little hilarity throughout English football back in 2017 when Liverpool signed Mo Salah from Roma in Italy for a then club record £37m transfer fee.
Even Jurgen Klopp, their German manager, needed to be convinced that Salah, who had struggled during his previous stint in the Premier League with Chelsea, was a better option than his preferred target, Julian Brandt of Bayer Leverkusen.
But for Ian Graham, the English giants’ first head of research, the numbers did not lie.
The Welshman, who has a PhD in in biological physics from the University of Cambridge, had done statistical analysis which he felt showed the Egyptian winger was the best young player in his position in Europe and would be worth the substantial outlay. History, it is fair to say, has proved him correct.
Maybe that was why Martin Christie – the Ochilview director of football who has received invaluable advice from Graham as he and his colleagues have endeavoured to make Stenhousemuir the best part-time club in Scotland – was unperturbed by the lukewarm reaction to Marvin Bartley being made manager this summer.
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Bartley could not be blamed for Livingston being relegated from the Premiership last season having taken over from Davie Martindale in February when they were six points adrift at the foot of the table. His time in charge of Queen of the South before that, though, had not gone well and he had left “by mutual consent” after his first full season.
Why was he the man to take over from Gary Naysmith, who had led the Warriors to a historic League 2 triumph, into the League 1 play-offs and to promotion to the Championship during his reign, and keep them in the second tier exactly? It seemed a strange appointment, a bad one even. But Christie had extensive data which showed the media pundit was the outstanding candidate.
“We were looking for athleticism this season,” he said earlier this week during a lengthy chat about Stenhousemuir's remarkable and rather unexpected rise to prominence over a cup of tea in Glasgow city centre.
“We sent videos of a number of managers’ games off to a company in Canada we use so we could get certain metrics on things we thought would be important. In particular, we thought out-of-possession stuff was going to be key.
“We were looking at things like the number of seconds it took teams to get back in position after a transition. If a side has done a press and it has not worked, how long does it take them to get back in their shape again? We discovered that Marvin’s team at Livingston was outstanding at it.
“We thought our ability to win the ball high up the park, but also to keep a compact shape and not concede goals, would be crucial to us and Marvin’s side were superb off the ball last season.
“We wanted substance over style and we thought the substance Marvin would bring to the group would be really, really high. We thought our players would suit him and we thought the types of players we were trying to bring in would suit him. We thought he would be aligned with our recruitment strategy. We said, ‘We think this is going to work’.”
It certainly has. Stenhousemuir have competed superbly with their full-time opponents in the Championship this term and are sitting in first place in the table despite having the smallest budget in the league by some distance. They have let in just two goals in their first eight games.
The scientific approach which Christie, the IT executive who had previously worked in scouting and recruitment at Kilmarnock, Cowdenbeath, Hibernian, St Mirren and Partick Thistle, helped to introduce after being headhunted by George Craig, the former head of football operations at Easter Road, four-and-a-half years ago continues to work wonders.
“George and I were at opposite ends of the totem pole when I was at Hibs,” he said. “Our paths didn’t cross a great deal. I knew he was an unofficial advisor to Stenhousemuir, his local club, when he got in touch. But I was surprised when he contacted me to be honest with you.
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“I was standing in the pouring rain waiting for my daughter to come out of school in Ayr one day and my phone rang. I looked at it and it said ‘George Craig’. I thought, ‘He's pocket dialled me. He must be looking for another Martin’. I didn’t even answer the call.
“But when I got home I thought, ‘I'd better see if George is looking for me’. I phoned him back and he told me, ‘I'm in at Stenny now. I've been given the go-ahead to create a football department. How would you feel about coming in to run it?’ It was totally out of the blue.
“But I was immediately interested. The remit was to build a department from scratch that we thought was going to be successful. I really wanted to learn from George in the way I had learned from Graham Mathie at Hibs. Sure enough, he has been an incredible mentor for me.
“Two big goals attracted me. The club had never won a league title in its history at that point. So George and the board asked, ‘Can we win our first title?’. But the long-term goal was to become the best part-time team in Scotland. We were eighth in League 2 when I came in.
“We were pretty sure we weren't going to pull it off by doing the same as everyone else. We were never going to outspend everyone else. So we had to try and find other ways to achieve that. If you can’t spend the most money, think outside of the box, find a different solution.”
Christie continued, “We got a sports scientist in, we set up a good medical department, we put together a team of data analysts and a team of video analysts. Data is only one part of what we do. But the data guys come into their own when it comes to recruitment.
“Every season we analyse whatever league we are in data-wise to see what we think it is going to take to have success. We look at the opposition players in the league, determine what their strengths and weaknesses are and study how we can exploit their weaknesses with the players we bring in.
“When we looked at teams that had been successful in League 2 and looked at the types of players we were going to be up against and felt that it probably required a more robust team than we had at that point.
“We had quite a lot of diminutive players, smaller, trickier players. We believed what was going to be successful in that league was physicality, being able to cope with that, to not be bullied or muscled out of games by the type of player we're coming up against.
“That went into the manager identification process. We were looking at a manager we thought would come in and naturally want to have a team like that. What manager has that in his DNA? Gary emerged as a really strong candidate.
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“This season in the Championship we had a totally different set of metrics, a totally different set of things that we were focusing on. We thought, ‘If we can do this it will give us the best chance of success’.
“Having an extensive database of players is massive for us too. I was on a webinar a few years ago and a Spanish sporting director said, ‘Clubs don't sign the best players, they sign the best players they know about’. That stuck with me. The more players you know about the better.
“We've got regional scouts all over Scotland, from the Highlands to Ayrshire. They all focus on their own geographical area and go to youth games, professional matches, whatever.
"Every player we've signed goes through four pillars - data, live scouting, video scouting and personality and due diligence. But the weighting to each pillar changes. We were never going to sign Ross Taylor for Auchinleck Talbot because there is not a high level of data in the West of Scotland League. We’re not metronomic, we’re flexible."
Graham, who left Liverpool three years ago to set up Ludonautics, a company which helps clubs and sporting organisations to make data-driven decisions after helping to identify, among others, Roberto Firimino, Andy Robertson and Salah, has assisted Christie along the way.
“Ian has been really helpful,” he said. “I contacted him shortly after I joined Stenhousemuir and he was kind enough to reply. I basically just said, ‘This is who I am, this is what I do, can you help me?’
“There were a couple of things we were working on at the time and the model was not quite working. I was specifically interested in tracking down certain pieces of data which we could not get access to at the time. I asked him, ‘How would I go about finding this?’ He was really nice and went out his way to help me.”
Jamestown Analytics enabled Hearts to launch a strong challenge for the Premiership last season after Brighton owner Tony Bloom acquired a major shareholding in the Tynecastle club. Christie is a hugeadmirer of the football intelligence consultancy and has been delighted to receive more of an insight into their methodology in recent months.
“Because we've got a relationship with Hearts now (Stenhousemuir have Gus Stevenson and Matthew Gillies on cooperation loans) we get a little bit of a look behind the curtain at certain things,” he said. “We are able to ask them about certain players if we want a certain level of information.
“When Gary moved on to Ayr he took our analyst with him. So we brought in Euan Blondin from Hearts. It suited Euan to go part-time because of some of the other things he has going on. We were delighted to get him, he has been a brilliant catch.
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“He comes from a Jamestown background and has seen first hand how they do things. He has probably helped to add another layer to our work. What they do is phenomenal. It is on a different level to anything we are implementing. But, if anything, it has given us reassurance we are on the right track.”
Yet, Christie is at pains to point out the success which Stenhousemuir have enjoyed is not, as his daughters Maria, 15, and Jessica, 11, will readily testify, just down to algorithms and analysis.
“The culture has been key,” he said. “With every position, whether it's on the pitch or off the pitch, we recruit the person first, then the player, the manager, the member of the backroom staff, whoever. We have to get the right people in the building. Fortunately, we’ve been able to do that.
“Gary and his assistant Brown [Ferguson] were wonderful and warm and inclusive. They did little things which made a real difference. For example, the players would always get a Tim Horton’s after a home game. But if my girls were at the match Gary would always make sure they would go away with one as well. He would say, ‘C’mon girls! Make sure you get some food in!’
"He didn’t have to do that. He's Gary Naysmith. Marvin is just the same as Gary and always comes over to talk to my kids when he sees them. They are invested in the team now. They come to games and absolutely love it.
“When we played Alloa in the play-off final last season one of my daughters baked cookies with all of the players’ names on them. The dressing room was an absolute riot after we won as you can imagine. The guys were all celebrating with bottles of beer. But they were delighted. They were cheering, ‘Yes! I’ve got a cookie with my name on it!’
“I love Moneyball and have studied it in depth. I am fascinated by the great data work that has been done in football. Having an IT background, it is absolutely an area I am really interested and relatively knowledgeable in.
"But the club has a real family vibe to it. We've tried to make it welcoming for players and their kids because we think it's important. You want a positive environment at a club and we have tried to create one. It goes right up to the boardroom and to Dan [chairman Wharton].”
Will Christie be lured away to a full-time club if Stenhousemuir, who take on Inverness Caledonian Thistle away in the Championship this afternoon, continue to outperform larger and wealthier opponents? He admitted the prospect is an appealing one. But he has more that he wants to achieve at Ochilview in future.
“I think we have gone go under the radar a wee bit,” he said. “I don't know why. Maybe we are just not a sexy enough club. But I absolutely love being involved here.
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“When I started out in football I dreamt of being handed a blank sheet of paper by a club and asked, ‘Well, how would you do it?’ To actually get the chance to help build something from scratch has been amazing. It gives you a real buzz when it works and is great for our fans.
"It’s been a process to get here. It has not all been ups, there have been a few downs. But the fans have never moaned, have never complained. They have been so supportive to me, the managers and the club. You can’t top the feeling of giving them something to cheer about."
Christie continued, “It would be really exciting and attractive to work full-time on a bigger stage. But the fact we're part-time actually gets us access to some players who don’t want to be full-time because they've got good jobs. Sometimes being part-time can be a superpower.
“To be honest, I'm fully focused on Stenny. I don't think the journey's finished yet. We can still progress. Let’s see where we can end up this season. As much as we're getting plaudits just now, which is great, we are only eight games in.
“Can we have a really strong, competitive first season in the Championship and cement the club in the second tier? Can we stay here for two, three, four seasons? That would be transformative for the finances and stature of the club if we could. That would be a better legacy than a one-off season.
“But we would never use having a smaller budget as an excuse for not doing well. We have got to outperform our budget. What is the point in putting in place the football structure we have otherwise? That is the only reason for all the extra things we do.
"We are always trying to move forward and improve, even just a bit. It is all about how we can be the best version of ourselves. We will see where that gets us.We don't want to put a ceiling on it.
"I am a father and a husband first and foremost. Those are my most important jobs. I want to show my girls that anything is possible if you work hard and smart. I think the Stenhousemuir is a good example for them to follow."
