Jay Spearing

[MrMichael]

I think we can give ourselves (as a club) a pat on the back for producing Spearing and Kelly. Finally seeing the fruits of Rafa's overhaul.

Kelly was 15ish and Jay was 17 when Rafa came in. Hardly on the verge of a first team place. But I take your point. I still think its down to him that we are starting to see youth come through again.

Without wanting to do this in yet another thread, I don't see how that stands up to reason at all. Very very few young players came through under Rafa, I was thinking about this the other day and how, imo, it was one of his biggest failings at the club. Maybe he did "overhaul the academy" etc, although that system was the one which had produced the likes of Fowler, McManaman, Owen, Gerrard & Carragher in the previous decade. And maybe we will start to see the benefits of that in coming years, but I'm not convinced the evidence really speaks of all the great stuff Rafa did at that level. Plus there's a huge list of young players signed during his time at the club who never got anywhere near a chance at the first team

Antwi, Nemeth, Simon, Pourie, Pacheco, Crowther, Roque, Brouwer, Huth, Palsson, Dalla Valle, Buchtmann, Mavinga, Kohlert, Ayala, Flora, Mendy, Saric, Bruna, Hobbs, Anderson, San Jose (those are just the ones I can remember).

Of course there's no guarantee that any youth player will ever come through, and that's not really an indictment of Rafa or anything, but I do think its hard to really credit him a great deal with a big amount of progress at the club at that level. If I were speaking of his many achievements at the club, and there were many, bringing through youth would not be a big one of them.

[Rich]

It all stems from Houllier's mis-management of Frode Kippe IMO

[Shaggy]

Benitez signed our best youngsters - the likes of Sterling, Suso - and he re-structured the academy so the likes of Wisdom, Coady and all the others are now being managed by proper coaches with genuine pedigree. He introduced Kelly and Spearing into the first team set up. There's a lot to be grateful for and the fruits of his labour with the academy will become apparent.

[Rich]

Benitez signed our best youngsters - the likes of Sterling, Suso - and he re-structured the academy so the likes of Wisdom, Coady and all the others are now being managed by proper coaches with genuine pedigree. He introduced Kelly and Spearing into the first team set up. There's a lot to be grateful for and the fruits of his labour with the academy will become apparent.

Rabid

[Shaggy]

Rabid

[MrMichael]

Benitez signed our best youngsters - the likes of Sterling, Suso - and he re-structured the academy so the likes of Wisdom, Coady and all the others are now being managed by proper coaches with genuine pedigree. He introduced Kelly and Spearing into the first team set up. There's a lot to be grateful for and the fruits of his labour with the academy will become apparent.

With all due respect, he signed pretty much all our youngsters, having been our manager since mid 2004. That's a pretty large list, and some of them we had just as big hopes of as we do now with Suso & Stirling. During his 6 years in charge at the club, hardly any youth players got genuine opportunities in the first team. Indeed I struggle to think of one, I guess Ngog, Insua and Leto come closest but all of them were signed for proper fees rather than really being "youth players". Maybe our youth setup was utterly destroyed by Houllier... was it?.... but still, youth development is not really something many people would say was a signature of his time at the club.

I'm sure he did do some good work behind the scenes. he was a clever guy who knew that sort of thing was important to the club's future, but I do think it can be overplayed a bit. As I said, its not like LFC had never produced a decent young player in the past.

[Alex]

Didnt he say the idea was to get these players in, sell on the weaker ones, and be able to have the Academy sustain itself?

I think hes done that.

Rafa might not have had many come through during his time. But it takes one of those young signings a few years to go through the system. I think in 5 years time, if we have none in the first team, then he can be judged to have not gone such a good job.

Our youth setup under Houllier was a joke. No one since Gerrard has come through. Only now are we seeing prospects. I honestly cant remember 7-8 years ago talking about the youth squad as much. All we had then was Mellor and Partridge....the perennial reservers.

[dww]

Benitez signed our best youngsters - the likes of Sterling, Suso - and he re-structured the academy so the likes of Wisdom, Coady and all the others are now being managed by proper coaches with genuine pedigree. He introduced Kelly and Spearing into the first team set up. There's a lot to be grateful for and the fruits of his labour with the academy will become apparent.

I actually think the idea that he failed the young English players is belied by the progress Kelly and Robinson (and arguable Flanagan too) actually made. The players that Kenny has promoted are by and large those that Rafa had been nurturing too. He seems to be criticised for failing to turn water into wine in a lot of situations.

Certainly the likes of San Jose, Barragan, Ayala et al. are doing as well as any of the local products that left during a similar period and we tended to get better fees for them too.

[Shaggy]

Didnt he say the idea was to get these players in, sell on the weaker ones, and be able to have the Academy sustain itself?

I think hes done that.

Rafa might not have had many come through during his time. But it takes one of those young signings a few years to go through the system. I think in 5 years time, if we have none in the first team, then he can be judged to have not gone such a good job.

Our youth setup under Houllier was a joke. No one since Gerrard has come through. Only now are we seeing prospects. I honestly cant remember 7-8 years ago talking about the youth squad as much. All we had then was Mellor and Partridge....the perennial reservers.

We got very decent fees for the likes of San Jose, Nemeth and others.

I actually think the idea that he failed the young English players is belied by the progress made by Kelly and Robinson (and arguable Flanagan too) actually made. The players that Kenny has promoted are by and large those that Rafa had been nurturing too. He seems to be criticised for failing to turn water into wine in a lot of situations.

Certainly the likes of San Jose, Barragan, Ayala et al. are doing as well as any of the local products that left during a similar period and we tended to get better fees for them too.

[MrMichael]

Didnt he say the idea was to get these players in, sell on the weaker ones, and be able to have the Academy sustain itself?

I think hes done that.

Rafa might not have had many come through during his time. But it takes one of those young signings a few years to go through the system. I think in 5 years time, if we have none in the first team, then he can be judged to have not gone such a good job.

Our youth setup under Houllier was a joke. No one since Gerrard has come through. Only now are we seeing prospects. I honestly cant remember 7-8 years ago talking about the youth squad as much. All we had then was Mellor and Partridge....the perennial reservers.

5 years time, that would be 7 years since he left, 13 years since he became manager... if those are the timescales does that mean we should credit Houllier with Spearing & Kelly?

[Shaggy]

Kenny Dalglish: “He [Benitez] reorganised the whole Academy and you can see the benefit in the kids now.”

Pep Guardiola: “The academy of Liverpool is the only one that can compare to La Masia of Barcelona FC. If Liverpool can manage those lads in the academy, then maybe 20 star players can arrive from that academy.”

[Shaggy]

When Rafa arrived, we had two youth internationals. TWO.

We now have 35 on our books.

[dww]

Kenny Dalglish: “He [Benitez] reorganised the whole Academy and you can see the benefit in the kids now.”

Pep Guardiola: “The academy of Liverpool is the only one that can compare to La Masia of Barcelona FC. If Liverpool can manage those lads in the academy, then maybe 20 star players can arrive from that academy.”

I think the Guardiola comment about managing them is the key one. How do we keep them progressing. Wenger has been excellent at getting players ~18-21 into the team and playing but even he has struggled to get a pipeline from youth to first team working.

Barcelona are doing a masterful job but at the same time it is comparatively easy to get players into a team when you dominate most games with capacity to spare. We aren't likely to be in a similar position any time soon and finding appropriate challenges to keep players developing without a B team in a proper league is something we have to overcome.

Both the praise and criticism of young, developing players in the first team (like Spearing) is generally disproportionate and I suspect unhelpful to most kicking on.

[MrMichael]

We got very decent fees for the likes of San Jose, Nemeth and others.

Nemeth we got £1m for
San Jose was good, £2.5m
Ayala we got about £1m for
Mavinga the same iirc.

By contrast though
Anderson - 100k
Buchtmann - 250k
Hobbs, Roque, Antwi, Leto, Flora, Pourie, Huth, Crowther, Simon etc - frees

Again, of course some youth players will fail and be released for nowt. But we'll have paid fees, sometimes quite substantial ones, for all those listed, I wouldn't say they exactly turned into a fabulous earner or anything taken as a total.

[Shaggy]

During his 6 years in charge at the club, hardly any youth players got genuine opportunities in the first team. Indeed I struggle to think of one, I guess Ngog, Insua and Leto come closest but all of them were signed for proper fees rather than really being "youth players".

Off the top of my head, Spearing, Darby, Pacheco, Insua, Eccleston, Ayala, Kelly and Jack Robinson were all given their debuts by Benitez. San Jose sat on the bench for a few big games and left for a couple of million quid having been signed for peanuts.

From that list only Kelly and Spearing have kicked on, but that's another matter.