LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, February 10, 2024: Liverpool's club crest on the side of the new Anfield Road development seen before the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Burnley FC at Anfield. Liverpool won 3-1. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

New Liverpool assistant sporting director set to return less than 1 year after exit

Liverpool are set to appoint David Woodfine as their new assistant sporting director, less than a year after he left the club in his previous role.

With Sporting Director Richard Hughes already appointed, Liverpool are acting to bring in his assistant, with Woodfine set to take on the role.

Reliable journalist Neil Jones reported: “David Woodfine is to return to Liverpool as assistant sporting director to Richard Hughes.

“Woodfine left his role as the club’s director of loan management last year, but has been been brought back as the Reds continue to revamp their football operations department.”

The returning staff member has a longstanding relationship with Michael Edwards, having worked alongside him at Portsmouth,where Woodfine spent 2005-2010 as a performance analyst then the head of performance analysis.

During that period, the Reds’ new sporting director, Hughes, was a player at Portsmouth.

In 2010, Woodfine left the south coast for West Ham, before he joined Liverpool as the scouting and recruitment coordinator in 2014.

Since, he has worked his way up, eventually becoming the director of loan management in 2020. He left that position in September 2023, but is now to return as the assistant sporting director.

The ex-director of loan management played a big role in Liverpool securing a move for Luis Diaz ahead of Tottenham.

The Athletic’s David Ornstein reported in May that “he flew to Argentina with then-club doctor Jim Moxon after Colombia let the player undergo a medical while on international duty.”

NEW JERSEY, USA - Wednesday, July 25, 2018: Liverpool's Director of Football Michael Edwards during a preseason International Champions Cup match between Manchester City FC and Liverpool FC at the Met Life Stadium. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Along with the trio of Hughes, Woodfine and Edwards, though the latter won’t be employed by Liverpool FC, the club have brought in other new faces in a restructure.

Jansen Moreno, a Gibraltar native who studied at Liverpool John Moores, has joined the club as opposition analyst.

It will not be his first time working at Liverpool, either, having gained experience with a voluntary placement at the academy in 2010.

Moreno joins a team led by head of opposition analysis Greg Mathieson and supported by opposition analyst James French, while Daniel Spearritt serves as post-match and elite player development analyst.