New Tottenham chief scout Steve Hitchen has been credited for Liverpool landing Luis Suarez.

Liverpool's former director of football Damien Comolli says the groundwork done by scout Hitchen enabled them to wrap up a £22.8million deal with Ajax in January 2011.

“Steve was the main reason why we signed Suarez," Comolli told The Independent.

“He knew Suarez very, very well from his time at Spurs. And he got the intel that Ajax had made Suarez available for transfer. Nobody else knew that. It gave us a head-start. That is typical of Steve.

“Steve is very dedicated and committed with a great work ethic. He is incredibly well-connected and his network is very, very good. So he is the centre of a web of information. He is very popular in the scouting community, if you speak to scouts from anywhere in Europe, they all know Steve."