Liverpool FC Youth Teams

[Venton]

City hit us perfectly on the break from the half way line and score well. Hasn't really reflected the balance of the game but at the end of the day City have defended well and been clinical on the break and we haven't.

Liv 0-3 City

[Venton]

At this point I'm off for tapas. Hopefully we can score four in the next 10 minutes.

[Venton]

We did not, but we did score one in a last couple of minutes to end it 1-3, and I have had a surfeit of garlic.

[Pablo]

Koumetio takes his eye off the ball for a second and miscontrols a fairly simple pass back into the box. He realises the City forward is close by and lunges towards the ball to knock it away and succeeds only in slotting it into the corner of his own net.

Liv 0-2 City

As big of a talent as he is I still think he's not ready for first team football. Too error prone.

[Charly]

Who looks the best out of Phillips, Williams, Van Der Berg and him?

Not entirely happy with the situation ass none of them look anywhere near ready to me. Need to loan them for experience.

Thats how you mould them. Joe Gomez had a chance with Charlton as a teenager, and performed solidly when asked to fill in after we signed him.

[Venton]

As big of a talent as he is I still think he's not ready for first team football. Too error prone.

Who looks the best out of Phillips, Williams, Van Der Berg and him?

Not entirely happy with the situation ass none of them look anywhere near ready to me. Need to loan them for experience.

Thats how you mould them. Joe Gomez had a chance with Charlton as a teenager, and performed solidly when asked to fill in after we signed him.

I agree, and the centre of defence is a critical area, you don't want to play around with that.

I'm more sanguine about Williams deputising as he'll get games when appropriate and especially in the cups. The way Jurgen uses full-backs makes it tricky to learn to begin with and Trent made plenty of ricketts to start. I think Williams is up to snuff in the medium to long term and he needs games in our system.

[Venton]

As big of a talent as he is I still think he's not ready for first team football. Too error prone.

All the errors I've seen him make are down to concentration. Bloody teenagers...

[Buzzo]

The Athletic.

Meet Layton Stewart: The young striker likened to Torres in Liverpool’s academy

By Caoimhe O'Neill Sep 30, 2020 52

Fernando Torres. That’s the name which keeps popping up when you ask people about Liverpool’s academy starlet Layton Stewart.

It’s not just Torres, either. The Huyton-born teenager’s style of play has also been likened to that of Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen.

I guess you could say we have been here before, and the last thing anyone wants to do is put unnecessary pressure on an 18-year-old still honing his craft by tagging him as “the next” somebody or other. In light of these comparisons and growing excitement within the club about Stewart, those closest to the No 9 are keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

Yes, Stewart’s style of play does give off throwback tones of those former Liverpool strikers. There is no getting away from that. He has that same ability to float on the shoulders of defenders before a burst of pace and calculated finish.

It was the first half of last season when Stewart, who joined the club at the age of seven, really started making waves. He scored 16 times for Barry Lewtas’ under-18 side and was on course to replicate the startling numbers put up by Bobby Duncan (30 goals) and Paul Glatzel (29 goals) in 2018-19. Any player scoring that frequently is bound to get noticed.

An ankle injury in January 2020 hampered his progress and, two months later, football at all levels was put on hold because of the pandemic. Before that, though, Stewart was given a timely boost in February with the offer of his first professional contract.

Sources close to the player told The Athletic that Stewart was uninterested in the finer details of his maiden deal. All he wanted to do was sign his name on the dotted line to keep on playing for his boyhood club.

Then in July, two days before Liverpool lifted the Premier League title, it was announced that Stewart had signed another contract with the club.

When good things happen to Stewart, they do seem to come in twos — or threes. In his final appearance before that ankle injury he fired home a hat-trick against Sunderland. And when football at youth level finally returned in August, he scored another hat-trick in a friendly with Crewe Alexandra. Then he put three past Stoke City’s under-18s on the opening day of the season (below).

He was given the captain’s armband for their next game, at home to Manchester City. Liverpool failed to capitalise on their control in the opening stages and City fought their way into a 3-0 lead. The match, which finished 3-1, wasn’t Stewart’s best.

Under-18s assistant coach Tim Jenkins, who took charge of the match in the absence of Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, praised Stewart as a player whose qualities stood out, even in defeat.

“I think what he gives us at this level (is massive), he’s a really positive influence on the group,” the former under-23s analyst and assistant told The Athletic. “It is just about ensuring that we continue on with his development really.

“Making sure that he’s able to lead the group, so we made him captain today to give him a little bit more responsibility because I think, in terms of his development, that will be helpful to him in the long run.”

What does the “long run” hold for Stewart then? Where can his short and, more often than not, successful bursts into the box take him?

He has been invited to train with the first team at Melwood several times, although there are a few sizeable obstacles between him and playing minutes in Jurgen Klopp’s attack.

First, he must advance from the under-18s to the under-23s and make an impact at that level. Following Neil Critchley’s departure to Blackpool, Lewtas was promoted to replace him as manager of Liverpool Under-23s. Naturally, Lewtas is familiar with Stewart having coached him last term. This is one of the big benefits of Liverpool’s academy and could help offer a pathway for Stewart to make that step up.

His goals at the start of last season for the under-18s caught Critchley’s eye and Stewart was called up for two EFL Trophy ties against Fleetwood Town and Accrington Stanley.

There’s been no such call this season. When Lewtas was asked on Tuesday how far away Stewart is from pushing into the under-23s on a more permanent basis, he told The Athletic: “I suppose for all of the under-18s, none of them are far away. If someone gets an injury and Layton is playing well and scoring goals, you know he’s not far away.

“At the minute, Luis Longstaff is leading the line and he’s doing ever so well. We’ve also got Fidel O’Rourke in the group as well, he’s training ever so hard and is desperate for a chance.

“So, Layton… I have worked with Layton a lot. He knows where he is. He’s got to keep playing under-18s football and keep scoring goals and he’s going to make it a little bit difficult for me to leave him out of the team.

“But you know he’s in a great place. He’s happy where he is and we are happy with his development, so there is no rush there.”

Keep scoring goals. That’s something Neil Mellor, a former Liverpool academy graduate, knows all about. The striker was among the first groups to be based at Kirkby and he’s familiar with the difficulty of climbing the ranks at youth level.

As a retired centre-forward, Mellor tells The Athletic he always keeps a close watch on the next generation of goalscorers. Stewart is someone he’s watched a few times and is one who has “caught the eye”.

“He knows how to score goals, he has done that through all of his age groups and now he’s full-time it is the time to continue that habit of scoring goals and impressing,” Mellor says.

On those comparisons with Torres, he explained what it’s like to be a young player coming through and to hear your name uttered in the same breath as one of the club’s iconic forwards.

“Don’t start believing anyone comparing you to anyone because you are yourself,” Mellor says. “You want to create your own identity as a player, you want to be a goalscorer yourself.

“I suppose it might be a compliment to be compared to great players but it can be an added pressure. I think it can be a little bit unfair. I have seen so many players come through who have been compared to Steven Gerrard, compared to Jamie Carragher, compared to Michael Owen and never have a career in the game.

“I would say: don’t listen to any comparisons and just be yourself, keep learning and listening to the coaching staff and deliver what you have.”

Neco Williams is a flare of hope for a lot of the boys on the books at Liverpool. The 19-year-old followed in the footsteps of Trent Alexander-Arnold in making the leap from the academy to the first-team squad and now deputises for Alexander-Arnold at right-back. A full Wales international too, Williams’ swift progress shows there is a path available under Klopp.

This hasn’t always been the case, as Mellor admits. “The relationship between the academy and first team hasn’t always been great,” he says. “But from day one when Jurgen came in he was stood on the balcony watching a game with Alex Inglethorpe (academy director) and the relationship has been really strong, which has helped Trent develop and establish himself as a first-team player.

“Neco’s around the first team. Curtis Jones is the next one. Harvey Elliott’s down at Melwood training and all of a sudden the relationship is strong. That helps the pathway.”

Mellor thinks players such as Stewart will want Klopp to stick around for “years and years” because they know he’s a manager who gives youth a chance.

“As soon as the manager goes someone else comes in and the relationship may not be as strong as it has been,” Mellor says. “That’s what Jurgen has brought. He’s brought the strength of that relationship which has helped the pathway. When I was at the academy the relationship was strained. We had Gerard Houllier and then Rafa Benitez. It was difficult for academy players to break through.

“Look at Trent. He’s 21 and one of the best full-backs in world football. He’s so creative going forward he gives Liverpool so much, yet if he was at a different club they may not have given him that chance, he may not have thrived.

“His first Premier League start was at Old Trafford. I mean, who gives a full league debut at Old Trafford? Jurgen did. He’s developed into a top-class player because he’s got a manager who believes in him.”

Thoughts return to Stewart, who Mellor interviewed last year. Even then his hunger to score goals was evident. “I asked him how many goals he’d scored and — bam — straight away he told me. He’s got that ingrained in him.”

Mellor thinks the FA Youth Cup, which Liverpool have won four times, including last year, offers a big opportunity for Stewart.

“I felt as though it helped me get noticed by the first-team staff a little bit more. I think I got the second record, Michael Owen’s got the record with 11 goals, I got nine.”

“So, I am saying to Stewart: go and get yourself noticed in the Youth Cup. Go and get yourself nine, 10 goals and establish yourself as a goalscorer in Liverpool’s youth team. Get 20, 30 goals in the under-18s this year then the next step is, ‘Right, you are too good for that level. Let’s see what you are like for the under-23s’.”

At the end of the phone call, Mellor echoes the same sentiment as Lewtas: “Goals get you noticed.” Stewart will know that, too. In the UEFA Youth League, he scored crucial goals against both Napoli and Genk’s under-19 sides. He then went on to assist the winning goal against Salzburg, which helped Liverpool advance into the knockout stages.

But those achievements are behind him now. The task at hand is simple and all eyes will be on the next finish. Score regularly for the under-18s and he’ll get a chance with the under-23s. Do the same at that level, and who knows?

Stewart’s style of play may continue to draw comparisons with Torres, Fowler and Owen, but it is the recent progress of Alexander-Arnold, Williams and Jones that will inspire him to keep improving.

[Venton]

The U23s are 3-0 up against Chelsea - only 26 minutes gone.

Rhys Williams, Jake Cain and Liam Miller on the scoresheet.

[Angryred]

Ran out 3-1 winners & the under 18s thrashed Everton 4-0 at Finch Farm

[SB]

Ran out 3-1 winners & the under 18s thrashed Everton 4-0 at Finch Farm

Cheers

[Venton]

U18s hosting Newcastle, just kicked off

[Venton]

Stewart's had two good chances now, but it looks slippy out there

[Venton]

Waltman with a shot after a good run by Balageze. Should have had a couple here really.

As a side note you don't often hear of kids with the name Max these days.

[Venton]

Newcastle hit the bar and Frauendorf misses a sitter, lots of action.