Which is probably not the best way to go about one's business during a transfer window. We knew that Dave Fallows and Barry Hunter--both from Manchester City, and both now joined up on Merseyside--would be out for gardening leave, but what we didn't know was that Liverpool "didn't have a scouting department" as they awaited their new personnel's arrivals:
"Our scouting team wasn't in place. I've seen one or two things written about a technical team but every football club has a technical team. Let's not say we are trying to reinvent the wheel here. We had a manager but we didn't have a scouting department."
I doubt that means that the club didn't have some sort of scouting network or knowledge-gathering system in place, but it's sort of concerning that they were essentially all out of ideas once Fallows and Hunter were confirmed as being unavailable until the transfer window had ended. No surprise, then, that two of the summer's arrivals were players that Brendan Rodgers was already familiar with, and that the other two were low-cost, low-risk players that could be developed.
The manager sounds optimistic about where things are headed from an organizational standpoint, however, and both scouts come highly regarded. How they fit moving forward will be anyone's guess until January arrives, at which point we'll hopefully have some good news about Liverpool's prospects of adding to squad that will likely be in need of reinforcements.