That's kind of on the club though, right? This is why clubs generally employ dozens to hundreds of people to watch players and observe their physical attributes and abilities, keep track of their wages and contract details and any other relevant information in a large database, or at the very least buy that information from a company that does it. Managing a first team in a top league is a 60-80 hour a week job. He doesn't have time to maintain a scouting database, so if the DoF asks the manager who they should buy he's going to give a list of players he's coached or ones he can remember playing well against his team off the top of his head.
It's starting to sound like they asked Ten Hag what type of player he needed, he described a set of attributes for each position and then Murtough just stared blankly for a while until Ten Hag started listing specific names.