Liverpool coach Borrell says academy 'was unacceptable'

[frank the tank]

Just to address some of your points:

It's easy to say that but it really wouldn't have been possible to have that squad, we let Warnock go because i) he wanted first team football and ii) we had better options at the time (Riise). Given his development is largely due to first team football in at Blackburn and Villa in the last few years he probably wouldn't have devbeloped into the player he is now had he stayed, because this is the first season we haven't had a better option.

Arbeloa, Alonso, Crouch, Garcia, and Hyypia wanted to leave. For varying reasons. Bellamy had to be sold to Bring Torres in, as did Garcia. Bellamy by the way was poor for us and was rightly sold. The fact he's gone on to have a good season this year doesn't make selling him a bad decision and it doesn't necessarily mean that that he'd have played as well were he still here, also we made a profit on him. Riera had a good season last year so last year I would have said yes Riera is better than Bellamy, but as I said before you can't just assume Bellamy would have had a great season were he playing here now.

Murphy and Finnan are too old to be effective for us we sold them at the right time IMO.

hmmm i take your point about warnock but why not have a buy-back clause in his contract at the very least.......

with regards to bellamy, yes riera had a good first season but wasnt a better player than bellamy in my opinion. Also, bellamy was only given one season at anfield - every big signing should get at least 2 in my opinion - babel has been shown more courtesy by the club in that respect. It can take a while to settle at a big club like lfc - yet we toss out the likes of bellamy and keane too easily in my view. If that was done by our rivals, then malouda, nani, drogba, wouldnt be where they are at the moment.....

with regards to finnan and murphy being too old - they would have been vital squad players and very dependable players to have on the bench.... scholes, giggs, neville all do this for the mancs..... also, murphy has had as good a season as any of our midfielders......

rafa has done brilliant things - people think that not getting the CL qualification this season is a disaster (and to an extent it is) but before rafa arrived, well it was touch and go if we would qualify on any given season.... he has bought brilliant signings like Reina, Torres, Mascherano, Agger.... he has made gerrard and carragher into better players..... but he has made **** ups as well.... i do hope he is here next season though...

[destinydude]

Shows the kind of shambles we are in. Time to sort out issues from the grass roots

[Mattshark]

Shows the kind of shambles we are in. Time to sort out issues from the grass roots

I'm pretty sure that is what Rafa has been trying to do.

[Antiben]

Or maybe Borrell is his own man, a well respected coach who has worked at probably the best football academy in the world and is saying it like it is. It's not like the club has been well run these last couple of decades, his comments easily believable.

he might be...but we clearly have seen what happens to staff/players here who have diff in opinion ie pako riera babel.rafa has got rid of ppl like parry and whoever that stood in his way during preseason for total dominance and has run the club like tony soprano ever since.so i believe almost everything that comes out from the club is well scripted

[Roboklopp]

You'd have be a proper mong to believe that doesn't happen under most top managers. Oh, look...

[el matador]

he might be...but we clearly have seen what happens to staff/players here who have diff in opinion ie pako riera babel.rafa has got rid of ppl like parry and whoever that stood in his way during preseason for total dominance and has run the club like tony soprano ever since.so i believe almost everything that comes out from the club is well scripted

Apart from the fact that the americans went back on promises and witheld transfer funds, rafa's other trump card is the youth academy and everyone knows it.

If Burrell stays in place then im convinced that we will definitely see players coming through into the first team. If burrell goes and another manager arrives who sees us as a 3-5 year job then the academy will get neglected again and this year will go to waste.

I coach young kids and I can tell you from first hand experience that structure and continuity is very important when it comes to coaching kids. They must learn all the technical, tactical and physical aspects of the game and this is done via a structured programme of development.

If anyone knows how to do this its burrell and his track record of success at la masia goes to prove the point. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a bit of a PR campaign on rafa's behalf but im not convinced rafa wants the job any more. I mean how much crap can a guy take.

Rafa deserves more time.

[Leyton388]

Considering we have not had any great players make it through the ranks since Stevie this statement doesn't surprise me TBH.

[Vermilion]

I'm surprised we were even able to get this fella off Barca, maybe he just knows a bit about football....and thought that working with Rafa would be good, we are trying to find the best talent from all over the world...this man imo will help in that hunt...and i have a niggling doubt that if Rafa wasn't here..neither would this fella.

We have only just started down the road of change...the change that Rafa has wanted for ages at the academy and the club...we risk undoing it all with him leaving imo.

[Frenchie]

the very point i've been harping on about on the who should be the next manager thread.

[Exiled_red]

hmmm i take your point about warnock but why not have a buy-back clause in his contract at the very least.......

with regards to bellamy, yes riera had a good first season but wasnt a better player than bellamy in my opinion. Also, bellamy was only given one season at anfield - every big signing should get at least 2 in my opinion - babel has been shown more courtesy by the club in that respect. It can take a while to settle at a big club like lfc - yet we toss out the likes of bellamy and keane too easily in my view. If that was done by our rivals, then malouda, nani, drogba, wouldnt be where they are at the moment.....

with regards to finnan and murphy being too old - they would have been vital squad players and very dependable players to have on the bench.... scholes, giggs, neville all do this for the mancs..... also, murphy has had as good a season as any of our midfielders......

rafa has done brilliant things - people think that not getting the CL qualification this season is a disaster (and to an extent it is) but before rafa arrived, well it was touch and go if we would qualify on any given season.... he has bought brilliant signings like Reina, Torres, Mascherano, Agger.... he has made gerrard and carragher into better players..... but he has made **** ups as well.... i do hope he is here next season though...

We could have had a buy back clause but that would only have applied to when he was at Blackburn where he only spent 1 yr iirc and we probably still regarded Riise and Aurelio as better options.

Personally I think Riera did better last year than Bellamy did in his year here, his was tossed out because as well as failing to perform on the pitch he was bad for team morale (and to bring in Torres). And we were right to sell Keane as well IMO given his form for us (and his age and the fact we could recover most of the fee) For me his subsequent performances for Spurs vindicate this decision.

Finnan has been very poor from what I've seen of him since he left, he was a very good player for us (and undervalued by many IMO) but we got rid at the right time.