Well, in shape or not, as mentioned above, he didn’t let them play even when we had already won the title last season and there was actually no reason not to.
Of course it would’ve happened at some point if it didn’t then. That’s a more club/strategical need/move rather than Klopp telling the club to do it. Klopp took part in giving advice from the coaches’ point of view how to do certain things, but it was needed as an infrastructure improvement regardless. Same as Anfield. It takes time to decide on these things and then being able financially to do it. Being close to the academy wasn’t the main reason (though best when the whole club is at the same place, women aside, who are back at Melwood), Melwood just wasn’t fit for being the training ground for one of the world’s biggest clubs today.
Yes, probably, but who knows where they would have done it. I remember Klopp often complaining about how far away the academy was at that time and how cumbersome it always was to spontaneously involve them in training, etc.
I mean, if you can get all of the teams together, that was always the priority from the club’s point of view. From what I remember, the two options were to merge the first team with the academy at Kirkby and make it bigger if possible (it had a few hurdles, hence why these things can take time and we were late with a few for a long time), as we did, or move all of it (in that case probably also women included) to a completely brand new place. So it’s not really Klopp’s inititiative, I don’t think there’s one person at the football club who wouldn’t like all Liverpool selections to be in one “building”.
I don’t think Morton is worse than Nyoni, at least currently, especially see Morton cooking at Lyon.
Yeah, I think I’m more on the side of learning when to play those youngsters i.e. early in cups, or dead rubbers etc. Same as the small squad discussion had here already. I think I’m right in saying that Klopp was also surprised by the number and intensity of games here.
Note that the players you mention were first team ready. Many of the ones we’re discussing here are not. Chicken and egg situation agreed.
Indeed, and Rafa used to say the same thing as well, during the whole of his tenure with us. Bringing the senior and the youth players together must have been high on the agenda of the club since quite some time.
The move to Kirkby was very important in my opinion for coaching staff and players.
With all due respect to the stadium and we do have a pretty special one (that has also it’s question marks for the long term future), the training ground is the players’ club home, where they go to work every day.
There comes a time when some things have to change and new history to be created. Some of those moves/improvements were long overdue and that’s just club issues/strategy, not linked to certain coaches pushing it or blocking it, everyone would agree to it and want it to happen.
Sigh, when Klopp first started integrating these players in Dortmund, nobody knew them. They were incredibly young; Gündo came from the second division, etc. Besides, Klopp always said that if things didn’t work out, he should be blamed, not the kids. It’s really not comparable; we shouldn’t even try.
But what Klopp had to learn was the system of youth development in England; sending the kids away on loan to get more playing time was new to him at the time. Initially, he would have preferred to keep them all. ![]()
It was impossible to keep all of them because we had some large squads in those years. We did a lot of quality selling, which helped improving our team and squad.
Thanks
Solanki, Ibe, Brewster, Wilson (maybe should’ve kept him)
It was the right move. The player also wants to go and play, build his career. Even Shaqiri didn’t get a lot of game time behind Salah, for Wilson it would’ve been even harder.
Yeah. He wouldn’t be the player we see now without the game time he got after leaving Anfield.
Slot is his own man and should be judged on how he is doing in the job. One full season, one Premier League title. That is excellent. Then the second season - ugh, so many things going wrong. Some of that has been on Slot, some of it has been on circumstances out of his control.
So here we are, jury is out, and he might be moved on in the summer, or he might stay on. If we fail to qualify for next season’s CL he will surely be moved on. If we don’t win anything, but say we sneak into next season’s CL via 5th spot, it’s borderline. There will be a review and he may or may not come out of that with his job at Liverpool. If we did something special like win the CL, then Slot would almost certainly stay on. Two seasons, one Prem, one CL, I don’t think you can sack a man for that output.
So let’s see.
One thing he should learn to do is use more players. The core group he regularly deploys is too small and that probably has an adverse effect on quantity of injuries and how knackered the players get, as they aren’t rotated enough. He should trust a few more to carry more of the load. One mitigating circumstance he would no doubt point to is that he would like to, but injuries have hampered it.
My hope is that the Dutch national team will call him up to take over at some point, maybe even this summer? ![]()
Nyoni is 4 years younger, Morton showed some promise at Blackburn and Hull but Klopp never showed much interest in bringing him fully in. Maybe it tells you a fair bit about that league and before anyone says it Jacquet is also about 3 years younger.
Hhm, I’d like to remind you about Fabinho, who played at Ligue 1 for quite a long time before joining us. Plenty of successful Ligue 1 players have succeeded here in England in recent years (unlike say, Italian players from Series A).
Plus, all those French talents over the years… most of them are from Ligue 1 before joining other leagues.
It’s not uncommon for players to play well at a lower level but never be able to step up because it’s their maximum level ![]()
There is an assumption that a playing career is a single pathway, and a player always ends up with the career they were always going to have. In reality it’s a series of sliding doors moments that can take a career in different directions.
The temptation is to look at Tyler Morton doing well for Lyon, and conclude it was a mistake to sell him and he could have done a job for us. But Tyler Morton’s success at Lyon is a function of him being put in the first team and playing regular football - something that would never have happened at Liverpool.
There have been loads of players like this down the years - kids who couldn’t make a breakthrough at Liverpool who went on to have good careers. Dom Solanke, Harry Wilson. Aspas, Luis Alberto, Thiago Ilori. Seb Coates. etc. it doesn’t mean that it was wrong to move those players on.