76-year-old England coach Warnock revealed in an interview with the Guardian that he missed the opportunity to sign Van Dijk while coaching at Crystal Palace.
"I wanted to sign a central defender when I was at Crystal Palace, so I sent my assistant Ronnie Jepsen to Scotland for a visit. He came back and said there was a player that would cost about £4 million, but he was excellent, so I told the situation about the management of Crystal Palace (Crystal Palace Chairman Steve Parrish) and asked him to give him 24 hours to consider and went to the data analysis team. The next day he told me: 'We don't plan to continue to advance the deal.' I asked him why, and he said they didn't think the player was fast enough. I said: 'He might not look fast enough, but in Scotland he doesn't have enough room to play, and if he needs to sprint, he will sprint.'"
And so, Warnock's Crystal Palace missed 4 million pounds to sign Van Dijk. Asked if even a great player like Beckenbauer would be denied by data analysts, Warnock said: "Yes, Beckenbauer wouldn't be recognized by the data, right? He could only play on Sunday's amateur league. So we couldn't sign Van Dijk, and he ended up going to Southampton for 13 million pounds. A few years later, I brought Cardiff City to the Premier League and met Van Dijk against Liverpool, and he said to me, 'Mr. Warnock, you could have signed me.' I scolded, 'I bet you're glad you didn't like me at the time.' We all laughed."
"It shows a lot of issues, they can sign these great players on computers, but when I was in Middlesbrough, they told me that I signed a left back and I looked at him for five minutes and said, 'He doesn't defend. I don't want him.' They said, 'But the data shows that he has the most steals and headers.' I said, 'You guys listen, he doesn't defend at all.' Now the coaches are basically just trainers, they ask the scout team to pick the players, but the data analysts can't see the character or other performance of the players."