by bigmick » Mon Jun 08, 2009 1:16 am
Fairly obviously the guys who have been sacked would find it hard to be aggrieved based on the huge amount of success they've been having. That said, they could obviously make a case for their loyalty over the years to Liverpool being forgotten, and more pertinantly I think they've got a very strong argument whioch would indicate that it isn't really their fault that we have been so awful at producing players for many years now.
Firstly you have to recruit the right youngsters. Now we've gone on a round the world quest ever since Rafa has been at the club, signing various kids sometimes for decent money from all corners of the globe. I think it's fair to say that so far the policy hasn't exactly been a rip roaring success, and the question is are we buying/acquiring the wrong people in the first place, or is their ability coached out of them at the academy?
Now obviously it's hard to say for sure, but I simply cannot accept that the same people who brought through Gerrard, Carragher, Owen, Fowler, Macmanaman and the like have suddenly become useless. Much more likely is the idea that we are recruiting the wrong players, or more to the point NOT recruiting the right ones. Too often recently I've seen good young players at Everton, Man Utd, Villa and the like and I've been left wondering where were we when they were being snapped up? No doubt on some dusty European claycourt pitch drooling over some kids "technical skill". We need IMHO to focus much closer to Home, and to consider more readily players who are potentially going to be suited to ENGLISH football. That we apparently aren't doing that, is hardly these guys fault.
The other area which isn't these guys fault is that we are less attractive to the best young boys, simply because we have an awful history of not giving them an opportunity. Now you could ask on many levels why on Earth we spent 7 million quid on Dossena last Summer, and I'm not even talking about the fact that he is awful. I'm talking about the fact that we had Insua, so why didn't we trust him to be back up? Why did we need another left back? You could say the same thing for Deggen at right back. Now obviously in his case he may actually be quite good, although whether or not we will ever find out is another thing. Derby though is quite good by all accounts, why not trust him? When you add in the absolute proliferation of "options" and "possibility" players we have stuffed the squad with over the years, you can see why the youngsters don't come through.
Then we leapfrog the whole system by bringing in players like David N'Gog. Although I haven't seen them play, can he really be that much better than Nemeth and Pacecho (and if he is, what are they doing still at the club?). Even the dreaded styling might be a bit easier to stomach if we were blooding a couple of youngsters as opposed to a Bolo Zenden.
No, I agree the acadamy has been an abject failure, but it may well be the case that the wrong people were before the firing squad on this occasion.
Last edited by
bigmick on Mon Jun 08, 2009 1:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".
