The reference to his involvement in analysis probably indicates why we gave him the job. Quite a lot of the work the analysis guys do is around set-pieces, although the focus tends to be more on exploiting weaknesses in the opposition defence rather than how we defend against them.
When I joined the club they did an open evening at Melwood at the end of my first week (never happened again, FWIW) and the analysis guys were very keen to highlight a goal we'd scored against City (Skrtel header) where they'd identified that City's set up left them vulnerable at the back post from corners. So we'd targeted the delivery and our most aggressive header of the ball to be in that space. It's noticeable because you normally expect to see the centre-halves in the middle of the box, but Skrtel was at the back post and made a run into the danger area.
The analysis guys were, understandably, quite pleased with themselves (in truth, I think this was a rare success, either because opposition teams didn't always set up the same way against us, or because the players didn't execute the plan properly on match day). Skrtel probably got a £20-30k goal bonus, the analysis team (many of whom were students from JMU earning minimum wage) got a few £100 each.
I remember wondering why we had inexperienced students doing this job rather than qualified coaches / former players who would have had a better eye for patterns of play and defensive set-ups. It just felt like an after-thought. Oddly, it looks like we're still way behind the curve more than a decade later.