KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Buying young....but

For many years Liverpool have been supposedly been buying the best young players from all over Europe, Africa and maybe South America.

Rafa started this but with buying young and cheap we should be seeing some return on that. Only of late with Kelly, Spearing have we seen some sort of breakthrough by the youngsters. And tbh, LOCAL TALENT!!

But today, have come across how we look to sign 3 players of the ages of 16, 16 and 17! REALLY???

When are we really going to get talent and put them through. We lack youth coming through. We haven't done it for ages and I can't see why not? IF I'm correct that it wasn't so long ago that our youth team won the FA Youth league twice and even the FA Youth cup and yet we are still having to buy players and not use these youngsters?

When is LFC going to get some return on these youngsters??

I really hope Sterling gets his chance and he takes it coz I really feel that we waste more time buying these youngsters then grooming them and getting them to be 1st team players.

Well since Rafa revamped the Academy when we had that summer where 30 staff members were sacked inc the people who brought through Gerrard/Carra/Fowler everyone was having ago, but bar the appointment of john mcmahon as Reserve team coach and youth coach or something like that the changes have worked wonders so far.

And tbh never ever rated john mcmahon as a manager or coach is we signed him from Tranmere.

During the time when Rafa was in charge the majority of the academy was quite frankly awful in terms of what they were being taught and the equipment and the coaches.

And it shows when all the players we had in our academy where only from Merseyside more or less until Rafa came in. When Rafa came he started buying a few youth players from around the world and sticking them in our academy to make the local youths in the academy up their level, e.g like when you loan players for expereince, now the local players where playing with people who were fast/good technically like Pacheco etc etc.

On the Players at the academy at the moment I'm really confident we may have around 4-6 1st team players in our team by 3-4 years time. As quite frankly all of these players in our youth team are miles better than the youths we had when Rafa took over like Darren Potter, Guithre and Hamill and Jack Cork.
The following imo will play for lfc, sterling, wisdom, robinson, kelly, and with Commoli signing more players than Rafa ever did for the youth teams we'll be bound to have quite a few more in there.

The following will make the premier league or lfc just not seen enough quality in youth or 1st team on regular basis Coady, Flanno, Wilson, eccleston

it does seem to be a bit mediocre of late doesn't it! Gone are the days of clubs growing there own talent. Spearing has gotten alot better this year as has Kelly so that is a good sign. Hopefully Morgan can step it up to the next level too!

Yeah, but your hardly going to play Flano and Robbo, when your've got Kelly, Johnson and possibly the best left back in the league this season. I think it comes down to who we loan our players out to, and we're not doing well in that aream we need to try and loan them out to top devision teams to get them playing.

World class doesn't grow on trees.

Only a handful of players reach the level of Gerrard, Fowler etc. Where there is the situation that a promising youth player is competing for a first team place with an established (especially English) international, the chances for that school kid to shine will be limited. Unless it's fairly obvious he's a Rooney or Gerrard.

So unless you're out of this world on the training pitch, and you grab your chance by dominating every game you actually get to play, you're not likely to be anything other than a regular pro (at best). The club buys a great deal of players in order to find those rare diamonds, but the rest (probably 95%+) will find their way into the lower leagues or back home (if they were foreigners), making money for the club in the process.

I think a lot of eyes will be on the Kelly/Johnson situation, and I have a reasonable expectation that one of them will not sign a new contract with Liverpool unless we are CL regulars and challenging for the title (because one of them will see his chances of playing for England diminished by a lack of game time for his club).

I'm going to be bias here, but I think we should try and get Chris Wood from West Brom. He's been loaned out to Birmingham and scored 9 goals from 13 starts. He's a big boys too, and seems to be getting better every game he plays.

A policy we should adopt that Man U has used and used to their advantage is when we loan our players to loan them to other EPL teams. So they get that experience they need of good 1st team football. Not go to lower leagues. Apart from Shelvey who was successful we can't get much luck out of it.

Look at Welbeck and Cleverage (something like that) Got good experience and have broken into the first team! It has really worked for them.

lol - Now I can tell my manc friends that their best young player is called Cleavage!

Rafarendum, be fair - Fowler and Owen were exceptional talents from a young age. Those players don't fall out of the air ten a penny.

Youth isn't getting a chance under Kenny?! Are you insane? You may not consider Kelly and Spearing to be young, but I do, and they hadn't had many chances under Rafa and Roy. Kenny came in and gave them both a fair go, and they've both risen to it.

He also put the trust in Flanagan and Robinson to throw them into the first team at the end of last season too. At the time there were injuries to all of our full backs (Kelly, Johnson, Aurelio), and the two lads also done brilliantly. Robinson is currently injured and has been for a while now. Flanagan is 3rd choice between the excellent Johnson and Kelly - and rightly so. I don't see how that equates to 'Kenny not trusting them'. Would you have him drop Johnson and Kelly to give Flanno a game just to prove he trusts him? I think Flanagan should go out on loan this month.

I think we haven't seen many young players making the breakthrough this season yet because ALL of the games are too crucial to be f*cking around. The home draws to lower opposition this season have proven to us that there are no banker-wins and risks with youngsters certainly can't be taken in these games. The League Cup has been taken very seriously because it's imperative that we win some silverware. We have no European competition this season, so we can't test them there.

I would have liked to see more young lads getting a go, but I completely back Kenny's decision to so far not give them that go. Until we have injuries that make it a necessity, then we should continue that, because silverware and 4th place are far too important to be taking gambles with young lads just to prove that they're trusted.

First things first would all of you of prefered for Kenny to play the likes of Kelly, Spearo, Sterling etc and have rested Suarez Gerrard, agger skrtel in the carling cup when we played Chelsea away then there would be zero talk of wembley at the moment and Suarez would be banned for 2 more league games.

The bottom line is this season the pririty is 1 torphy and top 4, over the last few years clubs going for 4th have had to win 1 trophy in order to boast the standing of the club worldwide to attract better names for the 4th place push.

Last season city got the Fa cup, few seasons back Spurs got Carling cup, last season Arse tried and failed for Carling cup.

And all the people saying Kenny should play Robinson or Wisdom or Morgan think about you'd they would replace in the team. How would you feel if you were Kuyt, or Carroll if Morgan was given a starting place above you or started on the bench while you weren't even in the starting 18. I'm certain if we had an injury crisis or were short on numbers like we were last season then they would have played more, like flnno and robinson did but we have 2 players in every position for the first time in ages.

And touch wood we haven't had any injuries in 2 of the same positions yet this season.

e.g before Lucas got injured Spearo had only played 2 matches in about 23 games with both being in the Carling cup as Lucas played every league game before his injury.