The Yoot

Published on Friday, August 7, 2009  

The recent Reds tour of the Far East has brought with it some promising performances from some of the younger players – after a relatively quiet summer, is this an indication that Rafa is getting ready to let the more promising youngsters off the leash?

A couple of players made or were in the process of making names for themselves in the first team last year – Lucas ‘enjoyed’ his second season of senior football, despite what the majority of the Anfield crowd though of him (I’ve read an article today stating that he wants to leave if he doesn’t get regular first team football this year – talk about ways to endear yourself to the fans!) and Emiliano Insua made a very good claim for the left-back spot and is likely to start the season there, given the uncertainty surrounding Dossena and the seemingly cursed Fabio Aurelio once again crocked.

There has been a lot of speculation and rumour about the Academy around Merseyside for a long time but by now the management team in place should either be a Rafa appointment or someone who he approves of and the Academy has got to start producing the goods.  Previously  promising youngsters have left the club in the close season (the likes of Godwin Antwi, Jack Hobbs and Paul Anderson), those sold not released no doubt have cast-iron buy backs deals in place but we’ve been hearing about these lads for ages – Hobbs especially was ‘bigged up’ for a great career at Liverpool.

Given that money is supposedly tight, even with the change left over from the Alonso/Aquilani transfers, surely it’s better spent on a big name signing than  two or three squad signings (Benitez does seem to be coming round to this way of thinking – Torres, Johnson, Aquilani etc) and the youth be given a chance.

If Nemeth can put his injury problems behind him, his finishing ability could be the key to putting the chances that Liverpool fluffed against the smaller sides last year away.  Spearing has looked compact and efficient (the opposite of Lucas) and Pacheco has the look and touch about him of a certain other small mercurial Spaniard (thanks to Adam for that comparision ;) ).  Nabil El-Zahr also got a fair bit of pitch time and looked effective and Stephen Darby and Martin Kelly got some European exposure against PSV.

With Adam Hammill, another youngster given big press by the club, being linked with a move away from the club (incidentally, I found this site looking up Adam Hammill – who’s he pissed off?) I worry that the Academy is being turned into a continual conveyor belt, providing average players for the Championship, Scottish leagues and everything beneath, breaking even by selling several players a year for a few hundred thousand, maybe a million or two.  This isn’t going to change until the youngsters get more of a chance to play, not just the yearly friendlies.

The League Cup has become the proving ground for youngsters and maybe our early exits in the past couple of seasons have contributed to the lack of youngsters coming through – hopefully this year we can stay in and one or two of the young players can stake serious claims to be played in bigger matches.

On a side note, it was nice to sit and watch the draw for the qualifiers for the Champions League without worrying about what side we’d face and Arsenal versus Celtic will provide a contest with real bite very early on in the season – don’t think Celtic will relish facing Arsenal but I should think Wenger would have a preferred a foreign side given that his squad mostly seems to be constructed of balsa.  Quite fancy a sneaky bet on Celtic for this one!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Leave a Comment

Name and e-mail address are required. Your e-mail address will not be dislayed with your comment.

 Comments Feed    Trackback