The Liverpool academy set up – overhauled under Rafael Benitez – is finally starting to produce some great results. Under the skilled hands of Rodolfo Borrell and Pep Segura, Liverpool have turned things around and we have started to see more and more promising youngsters burst onto the scene. With so many hot prospects at the club, it is interesting to look at how Liverpool can nurse these talents, so that they have the best opportunity to make the transition to the senior side. Liverpool could stick them in reserves, ship them out on loan, or alternatively and perhaps controversially, they could set up a nursery club system.
Nursery clubs are common in other European countries, but not in England, and the FA seem unwilling to sanction any plans for these type of systems. Barcelona and Real Madrid both have nursery sides, who play in the lower Spanish leagues, it is a great level for young stars to learn their trade and develop. Clearly it is a policy that works for these sides, when you see the successful transitions many players have made from their nursery sides.
For Liverpool’s wealth of talented youngsters there would be clear benefits in a nursery club system. At a nursery club the young players would be exposed to a higher level of football from an earlier age, whilst still under the guidance and tutelage of Liverpool. It is a good way to keep the young players challenged and ticking over, instead of the reserve league, which does not offer youngsters a high enough quality to test themselves against. The reserve leagues infrequent games are not enough to be of benefit to a young player. A nursery side in one of the lower divisions would give Liverpool’s youngsters a much higher level to learn their trade, thus aiding their development. It would also be more beneficial than a loan period, as Liverpool could guarantee players were going to see first team action and not sit on the bench as back up for their time there. Players like Martin Kelly – who spent time on loan at Huddersfield – were lucky that they got the chance to showcase their talents on loan, but others are not so fortunate and return from a loan period having gained little to nothing from it.
There are stumbling blocks to the nursery club system, though. Firstly a nursery and mother club would need to be vertically integrated at all levels. We are not talking about the loan of a few young players here and there – Liverpool already have grass root link ups with a few other sides – but a consistent stream of players into the nursery side. The nursery side would also need to play in a similar style to Liverpool to ensure the player develops in a way that they can fit into the Liverpool first team. It would have to be a long term and nationally recognised link up, something which the FA – who are allergic to change – would probably not sanction, and something which could raises issues over the identity of clubs in the lower leagues.
Not sure I agree. The quality of the football in the lower leagues may be so poor that it becomes detrimental to the youngsters game. Also, the quality of the pitches they will be playing on may be far lower than they are used to, not allowing their natural game to flow (I’m thinking more of the fleet-footed wingers and forwards we have on the books at the moment than the defenders).
The idea is a good one in principle however, but it depends at how low in the football league we are talking!
i agree there should be nursery clubs fr the top teams in BPL ….liverpool have wealth of youngsters n we know that they will not be given more chances in the senior side as yet so y not a Liverpool B team in de championship to develop them instead of loaning our players to other clubs every year which can some time change a players style …
The issue is why would Liverpool, or anyone else, be allowed to put a B team into the championship and take up a place that another smaller team once had or should have. I agree with the idea of nursery clubs, but think if the clubs want to do it domestically they need to plan it long terms and start the team off at the bottom of the leage and let them work up (AFC Wimbledon style) or they utilise the SPL – Surely a team like Dundee or Hibs would welcome the opportunity to get some of the talented players on the books at Liverpool into their squads to compete in the SPL, and the SPL do appear to be prepared to embrace change more…. might be an option.
Would it not be more expedient to simply improve the reserve league? If you had a mirror system where there would be a prem, championship, league 1 etc of reserve sides and they played regular games against each other. 1 might hope that the aggregate quality of all youth sides would go up.
i think the physicality in the english lower leagues wouldnt bode well for ‘smaller’ up and coming youngsters.i could see the likes of Sterling getting kicked all over the pitch because he’s too skillful for opponents to get near.lower leagues in spain are a different story.
Not sure I agree with this but I don’t know enough about it to make a proper judgement. The problem I see here is that it will push smaller clubs out of the league just to benefit some of the big clubs and the gap is already too large between the big boys and the rest. Unless they are going to extend the number of teams in the lower leagues but I don’t think that is possible with the number of games they already play. At least with the current loan system, both teams benefit from the loan and I like to see the larger clubs helping out the not so wealthy ones. I feel that with the proposed system of nursery clubs you are just ensuring that the top clubs stay at the top which makes thing pretty boring in the long run.
The FA will not give in and its strange how they complain that the English are not good enough to compete on the world stage! Simple solution! Have feeder teams! Teams locally such as Tranmere where we make agreements to loan our players to for the development. I’ve been to 30 odd some youth matches and reserve matches and it’s not intense at all. Look at how well Tom Ince performed for Notts County on his short loan (why we didn’t leave him is baffling!). Arsenal, Man Utd have good youngsters who are ready because of loan moves! Look how many ManUtd loanees are out there! How do we expect Nemeth, Pacheco and others of the past to get better without a season or two on loan where they compete in the Championship. Didi is now a gaffer, this is where we should contact him and loan a few players out who are on the cusp of greatness! ie: Sterling, Suso who are still 2-3 years away from 1st team action!