Yes, which we largely do anyway. My point is that we have a routeway into the first team whereas City largely don’t. Hence the likes of Lavia would be less inclined to leave permanently as we would bring them in to our first team squad and give them meaningful number of minutes, perhaps signing fewer players from other clubs as a result.
We saw the impact that Bajcetivic had even when making a handful of his appearances last season.
Yep, that’s the point I am making too.
Foden , Palmer have had a route to the team as well. So incorrect.
I said ‘largely’ don’t, so not incorrect at all.
We’ve got two academy grads in the reckoning for playing time. So have they. The route to the first team is no different there compared to us.
The other thing with Lavia is he isn’t a local kid. He’s not grown up wanting to play for City or going through their academy from a young age. His parents aren’t locals or supporters of the club either.
He arrived there three years ago and after two years he had the opportunity to go and play football with the possibility of going back to City tied into that deal.
You can imagine local lads who’ve been around much longer and probably still live at home in the house they grew up in would be less likely to take that route and step away from all they’ve really known in order to back themselves to be good enough to come back or to make it to another club of equal stature. A few like Sancho have done it and we see it more than we used to with youth prospects heading abroad but it’s few and far between.
City = 2 players in how long?
LFC = Trent, Curtis, Connor Bradley coming through. Neco Williams who didn’t want to wait around but was getting game time etc etc
Sancho and Lavia, both uber prospects, left at a young age in the last few seasons precisely because of the lack of first team prospects for players considered among the best players in Europe in their age group. They didnt even stick around long enough to fail to break through. They just thought “fuck this…I’ve taken this club for what I can get from them and moving on to the next stage of my development.” Because that is what the industrialization of player development does to the people involved in the process.
I have been impressed with our scouting for academies throughout England in recent years. Seem to have gone heavy for northern English talents.
Seriously? It’s completely different. How many youngsters have got meaningful playing time here under Klopp, and how many under Guardiola at City?
Factor in that City’s academy strength is deeper than ours, and it’s difficult to see how you think the two are the same? We’re not seeing players with the quality of say Sancho or Lavia leave us.
Cole Palmer is considered a better prospect than Curtis Jones was. Sure Jones is a year older so their first team stats are not completely comparable, but look at Palmer’s involvement relative to what Jones had done this time last year. Palmer has a fraction of the appearances, and digging in beyond the raw numbers, very few of those are starts in meaningful games. Most are cup games or 90 second cameos at the end of the game.
£10 to @ISMF please.
Coming to this a little late maybe but Trent,Jones,Elliott and Bajcetic either already are or will soon become regular players for the first team with plenty of playing time in PL as well as cups,not too bad considering you’ve only mentioned Foden and Palmer for city
Elliot and Bajcetic strictly speaking aren’t academy graduates. We’ve got them from other clubs. At a young age , but still.
We dont really have enough players with the quality of Sancho or Lavia right now in the academy team.
Bajcetic excluded as he’s in the Senior team right now
Baj you could say was, but only featured in our academy for 12-18 months…Harvey I agree wasn’t as he went straight into the first team picture, whilst technically qualifying as an academy player.
Overall a club the magnitude of Liverpool, especially over the last 20 years, hasn’t really been good enough locally or nationally scouting wise…and obviously the strict rules in place previously preventing English clubs from taking 14-16 year olds from abroad.
Elliott is fair, but for Bajcetic this is a distinction based on a seeming misperception that other top academies are made up of players who have been there since they were a kid. City’s academy team is full of players just like Bajcetic who did the bulk of their development at a different club before being purchased to join their academy as a finishing school
Not sure how you’ve arrived at that.
The market for CMs was thrown out of whack by City and Arsenal, re Rice, not the Saudis, who are shopping in a different space…
Reading some stuff about his contract and they all quote Romano saying he has 3 clauses in his contract , the only one they mention though is city buying back etc at £40 million which becomes active in 2024, but no mention of what the other two clauses are?
Personally I consider any player to have joined a side before the age of 17 to have been ‘developed’ by that club. You’re not really developing talent at age 10.
There is also nothing wrong with buying in talent. You’d be limited to your immediate catchment area (which for Liverpool is half in the Irish Sea, and mermaids can’t play unfortunately). What we have done a good job of recently is boxing out the Liverpool/Ellesmere Port area where we were previously losing out to Everton. If you look at the best prospects coming through at Goodison you can see they aren’t getting the cream of the crop in Liverpool anymore as they’re all at Liverpool.
We’ve also moved into Lancashire really well - Burnley/Preston/Blackburn - we pinch a lot of players from that region. Where we can’t compete as effectively is Manchester/Warrington as those players tend to go to City or United. United themselves though are seeing themselves really getting squeezed out of their own city and the talent level they have is certainly declining in recent years.
Curtis Jones and Trent Alexander-Arnold are enormous wins for the academy. They’re both first team players and should be for a long time, and in addition they are also locals who were brought through the system from the age of 7. We have lots more talent right beneath the surface with the likes of Quansah and Chambers who are also locals but we have bought in players like Bajcetic, Clark, Gordon, Doak etc.
We’re doing fine I think. You can’t ‘create’ an elite footballer, you can only develop the talent you have to its maximum potential. If there isn’t a potentially world class footballer born in Liverpool in 2007 then the 2007 age group won’t be able to develop a world class player without buying them from elsewhere. What Man City have done well is identify and buy talent in super young as well as maximise the potential they have in the significantly higher population area they control in Manchester and the surrounding area.
Long story short, we can say that Man City’s academy is the best in the world (it is, by a country mile) without that being a damnation of Liverpool’s academy which is also performing well comparative to its size, investment and catchment area.