Liverpool Football Club recently announced that three ex-players – Robbie Fowler, Rob Jones and Steve McManaman – have joined the club’s academy in various coaching roles. The general consensus amongst the fan base is that having three very talented ex-players teaching the stars of tomorrow will be beneficial to the club, and it seems that the existing academy coaches agree.
After his team’s impressive 5-0 victory against Tottenham Hotspur at St Helens, Liverpool Under 21 manager Alex Inglethorpe spoke about how he feels having three highly thought of ex-players back at the club will help his young players in terms of their development and how he’s found working with the three new additions so far:
“At the minute it is so early, but the relationship will develop and will blossom into something really positive. It’s already got the makings of something and it’s fantastic to have them around the place.“
“It’s a privilege to have them with us and to me it’d be a travesty to have them sitting at home with all that knowledge being lost out of the game, I think it’d be silly to let that happen“
It is still very early days in terms of how long the three new coaches have been working at the club but Alex explained how each of the them has begun life at the academy, and how he sees each of them going about their roles in different ways.
“They’re all going to have a different way of getting their message across. Robbie [Fowler] is still a player at heart and he’ll join in the sessions so he won’t necessarily coach so much, he’ll pass things on via demonstrations.“
“Stevie [McManaman] will probably stand by me and be more interested in the coaching process where Rob Jones is more of a mentor. I don’t think he has aspirations to be a coach but he is a fantastic people person and is great with interactions like a phone call or a text. I think all of them will find different ways of coaching, they won’t all have a stopwatch and whistle around their neck“
Each of the three men developed in different ways, via different paths if you will, and Inglethorpe believes that each of them can pass on what they learned throughout their own personal development journeys during their formative years onto the current academy players.
“Stevie was a late bloomer. He was someone who came into football fairly late and although he was well fancied, he says himself at 14 he thought he was poor, at 15 he wasn’t much better, at 16 he still wasn’t sure, at 17 he got a bit better and at 18 he got there, so he’s going to have huge empathy for any player who is following a similar line. Robbie received a lot of attention very early on so [his experience of that] will benefit some of our players, then you’ve got Rob Jones who came from a smaller club into a bigger environment and that’s going to be the story for some of our boys too, so between the three of them they’ve for enough experience and empathy to understand the journey that [our] boys are going through.“
So it seems that it won’t just be on the training pitch where Fowler, Jones and McManaman will have a role to play. They’ll also be there to offer guidance and inspiration to a group of youngsters who will have to work hard to break into what is becoming a very competitive first team set up, and Alex believes they can do this very successfully.
“All three are very much young at heart so they can still relate to the boys and so far I’ve found it fantastic working with all three of them and I hope it’s a relationship we can continue and I think it’s going to get stronger and stronger.“
Whether it be during training sessions or via a quick word with the youngsters in and around the academy, Robbie Fowler, Rob Jones and Steve McManaman have a lot to offer in terms of player development at Liverpool, and if the early signs are anything to go by, all three will be great additions to Liverpool’s youth set up.
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