Former Liverpool director of football Damien Comolli has said that he did not expect the great outcome of Luis Suarez after he left the team.

Comolli was one of the people who assisted Suarez to join Liverpool back in 2011. After joining the team he went on to score 82 goals in 133 games before he left for Barcelona.

According to Comolli "In terms of stats he overachieved -- I never thought he'd score what he did. I thought he'd score -- but not that much, being honest. For all the rest, we were signing an incredible player who was undervalued by the market."

He adds "I went to the meeting with Ajax and came out and called the owner in America and said: 'I've got this deal, it's more than we expected.' He said: 'OK, but it's coming out of your budget next summer.' I said OK to that and we did it. I thought it was very important to do it."

Comolli shared his views on his recruitment style which he said is borrowed from the NBA's San Antonio Spurs and that is the idea of eyes, ears and numbers.

With regards to Suarez signing he said "He'd had a great World Cup in 2010. We'd watched him since [his time at] Groningen, so we were aware of what he did, how he played, the talent, and so on. That was the 'eyes' part. We didn't have a lot of data on the Dutch league at the time, but we knew he'd scored 41 in 61 -- 'numbers.'"

Adding "We tried to measure what goals in other leagues would be worth in the Premier League. It's not perfect, but we felt a goal in Holland was worth one-tenth of a Premier League goal, so we felt he wouldn't get 41 in 61, but we were wrong -- he got 31 in 33 games [last season]."

"We looked at other factors -- how and when he scored. Did he score when they were chasing the game or when they were 3-0 up? Did he get equalisers? Could you rely on him to score away from home? Did he only score against weak teams or against top teams?"

Comolli also said that they also look in to the personality of a player whne they recruit saying "We needed personality up front -- more enthusiasm, more workrate. Would he be a technical and emotional leader for the team at the front and give it that spark?"

"When we looked at it, he gave us everything."