Wasted Youth: Pressure to succeed not just a top-level issue

DURING the long, tedious summer months a number of young Reds left the club for new, temporary homes.

The likes of Suso, Ngoo, Borini, Coady and Teixeira moved to lower league (or in Suso’s case, La Liga) sides in order to gain first-team experience.

With barely 3 months of the season gone, Ngoo and Teixeira have already had their loans cancelled by both Yeovil and Brentford, whilst Adorjan and Mukendi look likely to not get many games, if the first quarter of the season is anything to go by.

Given that not a single one of these teams is any higher than mid-table in their respective leagues suggests the clubs (and their managers/coaches) are under at least a small amount of pressure to perform and/or improve, and unfortunately for our loanees, that spells bad news.

With all the furore in the press (often instigated by the FA for the purposes of blame-shifting) every time England under-perform, the onus seems to always fall on the Premier League clubs. The Premier League clubs then claim that, as they are under such financial pressure to perform they don’t have the pleasure of blooding young players and, thus, there are many young footballers – of all nationalities – that never quite make the jump to first-team football.

I’m over-simplifying, of course, for the sake of not running through the tired old ‘youth isn’t given a fair chance’ argument but that is pretty much it in a nutshell.

However, the fact that two of Liverpool’s most promising young players have been sent back from their loans having barely played any football in over 2 months is a worrying trend. Neither Yeovil or Brentford have any particularly outstanding players and yet Ngoo and Teixeira could barely get a game.
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You would’ve thought that having such talent at their disposal would’ve been a God-send for these clubs but clearly the pressure to perform (for financial, or other reasons) reaches far further down than just the upper-echelons of the Premier League and so the went unused, eventually being sent home.

It may sound something of a contradiction that a few days ago I wrote about how Liverpool’s interest in Will Hughes was admirable, but for the kind of money Derby are likely to be asking he is too big a risk. However, I think that both represent a different problem, at opposing ends of the scale of the problems faced by young footballers (particularly English).

While I believe it is best for the Reds to pass on Hughes unless the price is right, I think that it is also the case when many English/British managers are selecting from within their own clubs, a talented youngster will often be overlooked in place of a reliable, hard-working veteran. Just look at James Milner’s constant England selection over much more talented, attack-minded talent.

The loan system often works and when it does it is of a huge benefit to both player, and both clubs involved in the temporary move but the pressure to succeed is slowly filtering down through lower tiers, it would seem and presents a worrying trend.

Many of the young players that the Reds have loaned out over the summer (and no doubt will over the course of the season) will come good and go on to have long, successful careers but unless clubs are able to take time and not be expected to immediately achieve Champions League football, promotion, cups, etc. then young players are going to start finding regular first-team football hard to come by, unless they’re a consummate talent, and that affects players, clubs and fans alike.

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