Anyone concerned about the young kids coming in?

[el matador]

is anyone else concerned about the reason as to why all of a sudden we're spending large sums of money on young prospects like shelvey and sterling?

i feel a bit uneasy seeing that we've agreed to stump up £1.7m for shelvey when we could barely scrape together enough for the £2m soto in the transfer window.

people are saying the we are on the verge of being taken over and that benitez has a decent budget in which case we should be looking at the best players from all over the world.

but could the opposite be true and we realise that man city and spurs have changed the rules and we can no longer realistically compete at the top end of the market. that the lack of champions league football will virtually destroy our budget and you cant buy established players for a pittance.

so whatever we have should go on players who in a couple of seasons could make an impact. instead at looking at making immediate strides we are looking 3 to 4 years down the line ?

are we being forced to gamble on young players who have a lot of potential because we cant afford to do otherwise ?

[Shaggy]

Of course it could be the other way. If you add up Sterling, Shelvey and possibly Danny Wilson if it comes off, it's around £8m. Possibly a good sign that Rafa's authorised eight million quid's worth of youth signings when we all know the first team squad needs a fair bit of surgery.

[Exiled_red]

is anyone else concerned about the reason as to why all of a sudden we're spending large sums of money on young prospects like shelvey and sterling?

i feel a bit uneasy seeing that we've agreed to stump up £1.7m for shelvey when we could barely scrape together enough for the £2m soto in the transfer window.

people are saying the we are on the verge of being taken over and that benitez has a decent budget in which case we should be looking at the best players from all over the world.

but could the opposite be true and we realise that man city and spurs have changed the rules and we can no longer realistically compete at the top end of the market. that the lack of champions league football will virtually destroy our budget and you cant buy established players for a pittance.

so whatever we have should go on players who in a couple of seasons could make an impact. instead at looking at making immediate strides we are looking 3 to 4 years down the line ?

are we being forced to gamble on young players who have a lot of potential because we cant afford to do otherwise ?

We haven't been competing at the top end of the market for a long time, we've had a few big money signings, but nowhere near the numbers of them that the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea have been doing for years and Man City are able to do now.

We're not spending big money on kids £1-2m is a reasonable amount to gamble with. We've got a decent record with youngsters at these types of prices Ngog and Insua, have been brought through in recent years. I think that the reason we have only started making these types of signings now is because we have got the academy sorted out and a few youngsters are starting to get their chance, which is encouraging other youngsters to join us. I think this has more to do with it than any major underlying issue restricting our budget. (I certainly hope so at least). I actually this if funds were so tight we wouldn't be making these types of signing, we'd be saving every penny.

[el matador]

dont get me wrong because young players who go onto become valuable members of the first team really add a lot of value to the club and further encourages the youth set up.

im delighted to see the likes of sterling, shelvey, tony silva, the lad jesus fernandez coming through but i hope because rafa has had his hands untied.

but if its the opposite and he' basically writing off the next couple of years because of budgetary constraints im going to be really disappointed. we havent been good enough this year and without at least 3 or 4 first team signings we will struggle to finish 7th let alone 4th.

[skowser]

Could it have something to do with the new squad rules coming into effect? The country based player rules...

[BrianF80]

There's been a recognition since Rafa has been here that transfer wise, we can't compete at the top table. So we've tried the Arsenal approach. Pretty much since day one he's invested heavily in the youth and reserves. If you look at the teams that did so well in the youth cup most of the top players were recruited (Wisdom, Eccleston, Amoo, Kaca, LDV, Ayala, Bouzanis). LDV alone cost over 1.5m apparently.

[The_Positive_One]

I personally think that we have to go the youth route.... Hopefully some of them will turn good or even great, but we really have no choice at the moment... The mancs, chavs and citeh are/will be buying 20+ million players for fun, and while we may have more money with new owners, it won't be the astronomical sums they will be spending... I personally don't think we need those type of sums to complete either, but we do need funds.....

[RPAS]

Long term success is going to have to mirror in some shape or form the Barca model; the core of the team made up of home grown players leaving cash in the bank for purchasing 1/2 world class stars every say 2 years.

[Darkon]

Not the slightest, we need to have young players breaking in to the first team making the core of the team in the long run. Most big clubs have own produced talent that makes the core of a team with the exception of Real, Chelsea and Inter.

It is the cheaper option, which is good for us, plus it is the only way to have a continous culture at the club. We just need to have more of them breaking through to the first team than now, where only Inusa is a first choice and N'gog features as a rotation player.

[meffin]

Who's sterling? I been travelling asia for 4 months so this must be one i missed?

[PTP]

Jeff Sterlings son

[Fernandinho]

raheem sterling, seen a few vids he looks good but he is HEAPS young

[Dalglish]

Bloody hell. I presume if they'd gone to Arsenal we'd have threads saying "Anyone else concerned Wenger is getting all the kids?"

We're getting good young talent in. That's a good thing

[Vermilion]

These young players we've signed recently, i think even if they didn't turn out to be good enough for LFC, we could easily expect to make a profit on them if we moved them on to lower Prem sides.

As to the reasons to us signing them and having cash available, did Barclays as part of this deal not say funds would be made available to the manager.

[Dessy]

I think I'd be more concerened if we were'nt attracting in youngsters.