Mark Burchill set to join Richard Hughes at Liverpool

Liverpool are closing in on the appointment of Mark Burchill. He joins in the wake of Richard Hughes becoming sporting director at Anfield.

The Times, and many others, report that Mark Burchill is set to join Liverpool's scouting team. He'll arrive from Bournemouth and is said to be following Richard Hughes from the Cherries.

Hughes was confirmed as the Reds' new sporting director on Wednesday, though he won't officially take up the role until June 1st. Liverpool are completing a deal for his first request, however, with Burchill.

Burchill is Bournemouth's Chief Scout, having moved their after being sacked as Livingston manager in 2015. He was only briefly a manager, taking over as an interim boss the previous season.

But despite only managing 45 games, Burchill did win a trophy - the Scottish Challenge Cup. After that, though, he opted out of a career in management and focused on scouting.

He's clearly done well there, too, impressing enough that Hughes wants to bring him to Liverpool this summer. A deal is supposedly close and should be announced very soon.

Richard Hughes and Mark Burchill

Hughes and Burchill have known each other for a long time. They were both at Portsmouth in the early 2000s - something that's becoming quite common at Liverpool.

Former Liverpool coach Gary O'Neil, now Wolves manager, was also at Pompey at the time. Most significantly, it's where Michael Edwards got his big break in football, striking up a friendship with Hughes and his connections there have clearly held.

Edwards was at the forefront of the analytics revolution in English football 20-odd years ago, and the players he worked with have gone on to embrace that, too. Now several of them are ending up at Liverpool - essentially, Edwards is building a behind-the-scenes team that he's known for a very long time and, above all, trusts implicitly.

Hughes is an example of that, Burchill, too. And they may not be the last.