A lot has been spoken about Liverpool’s academy. We’ve had false dawns (Daniel Pacheco), nearly men (Suso) and the real deal (Raheem Sterling) and yet still Liverpool fans don’t know what to expect to get from the academy set-up. It doesn’t seem to have a defined place in our club.
Brendan Rodgers wasn’t the first manager to want to try out young players more often, but he was the first manager who entrusted them with a consistent place in the set-up. Andre Wisdom and Raheem Sterling were the first players in his tenure to get game-time in the first XI, letting both settle into the team before poor periods set in, with only one of the players recovering to forge a Liverpool career.
The aforementioned Suso, Jon Flanagan and Jordon Ibe also got game time, but Suso didn’t make the grade, possibly suffering from a lack of top-level experience a midfielder needs if he lacks pace (as Suso so clearly did). You still can’t argue that Rodgers didn’t give him enough game time. These things just happen.
So, what, with the above known, is an academy for? What do we need to get from it? Opinions vary. Many don’t think about it, as they’re rightly allowed. The first team is the main event and people have things to do, football shouldn’t be everyone’s everything.
Fans may not be too fussed about the youngsters because football itself promoted short-term thinking and short-term success. Managers can be brought to a club with the idea of developing young, raw talent but the fact of the matter is that when push comes to shove and results start declining, creating a self-sustaining dynasty with academy produced players always gets pushed aside. This happened under Rodgers. Liverpool, for whatever reason – call it poor management or poor transfer policy – forced Rodgers into a position where entrusting a youngster with a starting berth or an opportunity to come on from the bench could almost become a sackable offence if it went too wrong, because the senior players and management had been performing so poorly.
Expectations of both fans and owners are huge reasons an academy can fail. Fans love seeing young players enter the fray, but are rarely happy to give the players actual time to develop their game. I remember, two years ago last month, there were a fair few fans saying that they saw no way that Brad Smith would make the grade at Liverpool. Opinion is fair, but so is the idea that someone be given a fair chance at their chosen career for longer than 20 minutes against the league’s best side (then, anyway). Luckily for us, Liverpool were not so short sighted and kept Smith on their books, even playing the cards of his contract renewal superbly when it looked at one point like an impasse had been entered.
It is sometimes worth remembering that the clubs who seem to have produced the best talent, historically (be that recently or otherwise) are the teams that have less pressure on them to compete at a ‘Champions League’ standard. At a point in time, West Ham had nurtured Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Glen Johnson and Jermain Defoe into Premier League stars, with all of them gaining international recognition to some degree. It was only when the team was both relegated, and suffered multiple takeovers, that their famous academy started to stop producing top-quality players. Could this be because there was a focus elsewhere of getting promoted again, then having eyes on staying in the top division? Chances are probably, and this will no doubt be filtered down to the academy set-up, leading to a possible lack of motivation with the young lads trying to become Premier League stars.
Another team currently producing their own talent is Southampton, who have been famous for blooding youngsters, with this being an obvious philosophy for the club. They suffered enough relegations to have the strain taken off them and were forced into taking a different, more internal approach to finding success.
Liverpool are no longer the team they were once before, but the pressure and constant focus on the club has never really wavered. For all the complaining that I and many others have done to boot, the club remained steadily successful throughout the course of 2000-2009, even though it was clear we weren’t able to battle with the bigger clubs financially. I can’t help but think that this could have hampered the club when focus could have been turned to really allowing youth a chance. In my opinion, the steady stream of success has been a carrot dangled in front of the clubs nose. Never too far off another trophy win (11 trophies were won in the above time period, not a bad haul), every time we saw
In my opinion, the steady stream of success has been a carrot dangled in front of the club’s nose. Never too far off another trophy win (11 trophies were won in the above time period, not a bad haul), every time we saw success, the club will have seen that as a possible turning point in our history – that trophy will kick-start our time to reign supreme once more. Investment was pumped into the club, and the academy was once again forgotten about, or spoken about only to be used very sparingly, never used enough to allow a young man the chance to truly, properly, show his worth.
This is all just conjecture and opinion forming on my part, but I believe there’s something in it. But if that’s the case, then where does it leave our academy currently? Well, at the moment, the club seem to have a bit of an eye once more on producing decent players that can help the first team, but these players haven’t begun their rise to first team regularity just yet.
Brad Smith is back in the fold. Cameron Brannagan has been a regular on the bench this season and Connor Randall seems to be catching the eye of Jurgen Klopp. All of these players should be looking to kick on over the next two/three years, with the hopes that one, or all, can become first team regulars. That is ideally what happens. But should Liverpool be looking to develop players who can readily join the first team but also bulk up the bench? The idea that a player needs to be star quality or forever be banished to the Championship is nonsense.
Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson had players such as Tom Cleverley, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and even John O’Shea who played a role for the club but were rarely constant, first XI players. An academy product doesn’t need to be a world beater to prove himself useful to the club. The only obvious downside, of course, is that most ambitious, hungry players want to be playing regular football, so this is something that is often tough to manage, but it is possible. O’Shea often played big games because Sir Alex knew what he was getting, this can prove a massive positive in nurturing your own first-teamers.
There is no hard and fast rule to promoting youth talent and allowing them to flourish. We do have a lot of players who could make the grade. Out of the players not mentioned, Ryan Kent is back with the club, clearly having impressed Klopp. Sergi Canos has just extended his loan deal with Brentford, which can only help him as he continues to do well for that club, likewise Sheyi Ojo with Wolves. Internally we also have Jordan Rossiter and Liam Coyle who recently impressed me in the FA Youth Cup with an incredibly mature, calm performance.
A club should not rely too heavily on any source of players, be it transfer or academy graduates, but if you aren’t going to give the youth in your own team a chance then you might as well just sack the academy scheme off altogether, because it’s a waste of your time, and ours.
Given a chance, the kids could be alright.
