It is a bastardized reinterpretation of a story told by Graham himself.
Firstly, our data approach doesn’t really allow for us to be fooled by a 6 month golden period, especially not for high priced targets. It covers too big a period with too many games to be tricked into thinking short term statistical variance represented the player’s true quality
Secondly, what Graham and the team explained to Klopp was that there was no doubt that Darwin scored among the best strikers in the world according to their data. However, our data guys dont just score players in absolute terms, they also score them according to what we’re looking for in a player in that position and have a category of “great player, but not a Liverpool player”. That was how they identified Darwin due to the situations in which he contributed positively. Critically though, with Bobby on his way out and an acceptance that there was no like for like replacement for him, Klopp and Pep were already looking at how the entire team would have to change to move on from him. Darwin’s “lack of fit” was viewed in that context and considered fine for what they wanted to turn the next iteration of the team into.
The dumb version of the story on the internet is Klopp got a boner after we played Benfica and because he had turned into a dictator told all the rest of the recruitment team trying to shut down the idea to shut up and know their place. The actual story is that everyone was on board with Darwin being a gem and acknowledged it would take some tweaks of how we play to get the best from him, but those were tweaks we were already being forced into because of Bobby’s pending exit.