Liverpool FC Forum

[Fauxy]

Anyone else watch the match v everton?

Pacheco was brilliant, very threatening in the middle. Suso as usual did some superb passing but it was clear he isnt used to being so deep, was much more comfortable going forward with the ball than sitting back.

[RED BEERGOGGLES]

Anyone else watch the match v everton?

Pacheco was brilliant, very threatening in the middle. Suso as usual did some superb passing but it was clear he isnt used to being so deep, was much more comfortable going forward with the ball than sitting back.

pacheco goal v bitterz

Well taken goal ...and a good all round  performance

[jacdaniel]

Suso interview

The 17-year-old put pen to paper on a deal to keep him at Anfield until 2013 last Friday and has now set his sights on realising his long-term dream of becoming a first-team regular under Roy Hodgson.

In his first full interview since arriving from Cadiz, Suso told Liverpoolfc.tv: "I feel very happy. I want to be here a lot of years. I want to go on and play for Liverpool's first team, playing in every game.

"But if I want to have that I have to work harder and do my very best every day, in every training session."

Regarded as a teenage prodigy in his homeland, Suso resisted the overtures of some of La Liga's finest to join the Reds, identifying the 2005 Champions League final as one of the major factors in his decision.

"I had good offers from them (Barcelona and Real Madrid)," he said.

"I was going to sign for Real Madrid but one day before it the phone rang and Rafael Benitez spoke to me. He convinced me that Liverpool was the club for me and after that I had to change my plans. I was going to come to Liverpool.

"I have always liked the Premier League more than La Liga and I decided that it would be better for me to come here - even with the English weather!

"I remember watching the final of the Champions League in 2005 when Liverpool beat AC Milan. It was an amazing final and after that I really liked the idea of playing for this team."

[JamCar05]

Hodgson warns Pacheco

Young Spaniard linked with move home

Roy Hodgson has told Spanish teenager Dani Pacheco he still has work to do to secure a place in his first-team plans at Anfield.

The 19-year-old, who was lured to Liverpool in 2007 from Barcelona, is one of the star's of Spain's youth side.

Pacheco has featured in both the Premier League and Europe, making 11 first-team outings for the club.

But he has not made the expected impact on Merseyside, and has now been linked with a move back to Spain.

Moments

"He's had moments when he's looked good, others when not quite so," admitted Hodgson.

"He's working on his game. He featured in the unfortunate Northampton game.

"It was a great opportunity for those outside the first 13 or 14 to really show me, 'You should be thinking of me.

"When will he get his chance again? Probably in one of these games in Europe, who knows, may he will burst back onto the scene, but it is very difficult to do that in a reserve game."

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11669_6526017,00.html

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Doesn't exactly sound as if Pacheco is that much on Roy's mind re the first team atm. I wonder if he is indeed on his way out and back to Spain

[jacdaniel]

Ill be gutted if he goes.  We've all been raving about this kid for 2 or 3 years now.  He is excellent for the reserves and needs a chance in more than one game.  Shelvey, spearing and ecclestone have hardly set the world alight and they are constantly getting games and on the bench.

[JamCar05]

He is excellent for the reserves and needs a chance in more than one game.  Shelvey, spearing and ecclestone have hardly set the world alight and they are constantly getting games and on the bench.

Agreed, I find it very harsh if Pacheco is constantly being overlooked because of one bad game. As you mention those other youngsters haven't exactly done much either yet are quite often on the bench.

[Waldo]

Not sure I am very keen on Roy's public discussions about his/our players. We have just managd to get the business dealings of the club off the front and back pages and Rpy chooses to come out with strange statements.

Keep it to yourself Woy FFS

[Waldo]

He is excellent for the reserves and needs a chance in more than one game.  Shelvey, spearing and ecclestone have hardly set the world alight and they are constantly getting games and on the bench.

Agreed, I find it very harsh if Pacheco is constantly being overlooked because of one bad game. As you mention those other youngsters haven't exactly done much either yet are quite often on the bench.

Roy's quote does not suggest he is willing to rid of Pacheco in January as was suggested on another website article though. 

[RED BEERGOGGLES]

He is excellent for the reserves and needs a chance in more than one game.  Shelvey, spearing and ecclestone have hardly set the world alight and they are constantly getting games and on the bench.

Agreed, I find it very harsh if Pacheco is constantly being overlooked because of one bad game. As you mention those other youngsters haven't exactly done much either yet are quite often on the bench.

See this is exactly what doesn't  sit right with me with Hodgson ....because in the eyes of the chin stroker  Konchesky is a quality LB ,Poulson will show his true class even after being given ample enough games to do so  .... but Young Danny Pacheco is not considered good enough, and the Northampton game was the Kids last chance ....Spearing also played that game as did numerous other young players are they sitting waiting  in the departure lounge under the sign not good enough ? .....then again if Danny does go because he isn't deemed a Liverpool type player by Hodgson he will find himself in good company what with Van De Vart and Aquilani also considered not good enough for Fulham ...sorry Liverpool its so easy to keep making that mistake.... I must remember Liverpool are not in the market for young inventive footballers any longer....

[jacdaniel]

Gotta agree with RBG there, the attacking players seem to be the ones coming under fire from Roy and thats not good.
The likes of young Pacheco, Johnson, babel.  Offloading Aqua and not looking into signing VDV.

[maypaxvobiscum]

When Liverpool won their first European Cup in 1977, there were four Merseyside-born players in the team and two on the bench. When they retained the trophy a year later the figure was the same.

When Rafael Benitez's 2005 vintage claimed the club's fifth continental triumph against AC Milan, there were just two. The emergence of homegrown players has slowed down at Anfield in the same way it has elsewhere in the Premier League in recent times and with Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard both in the autumn of their careers, Reds fans have begun to contemplate the very real prospect of a Liverpool side not containing any Liverpudlians.

That Gerrard and Carragher are the most recent local graduates to have established themselves in the first team - barring a couple of decent seasons from Stephen Warnock in the mid-noughties - is an issue that causes much consternation among fans of a club with a longstanding reputation for developing homegrown talent. Liverpool have won the FA Youth Cup twice and reached the final once in the past five years, yet the first-team has not reaped the rewards of a promising pool of players.

There is no doubting the talent of some of the players who have come through the Kirkby academy, with the likes of Nottingham Forest's Paul Anderson, Leicester's Jack Hobbs and Barnsley's Adam Hammill - whose superb Championship displays this season have reportedly caught the eye of a number of top-flight sides - all proving that life after Liverpool can be a positive experience. Opportunities to prove their worth at Anfield, though, were almost non-existent during Benitez's reign.

The usual progression for academy graduates is to move on to play for their club's reserve team, but Benitez's insistence on packing Liverpool's reserves with a string of foreign imports led to the departure of the majority of the Youth Cup-winning players who had promised so much. Since the Spaniard left Anfield in the summer, however, things have begun to change; suddenly, the future is looking brighter for Liverpool's talented teenagers.

A sign of the Reds revolution came in a recent reserve match against Everton: there were eight English players involved, including four - Michael Roberts, John Flanagan, Steven Irwin and Conor Coady - who were born in Liverpool. In the corresponding fixture last season, there were just four Englishman.

According to Anfield legend David Fairclough, the Liverpool-born striker who rose through the club's youth ranks to win two European Cups under Bob Paisley, the Reds' renewed focus on developing homegrown players has come as a result of the Benitez-imposed shackles being lifted from reserve-team coach John McMahon. And while Fairclough, who now works as a pundit for LFC TV, understands the fans' fears about a lack of local heroes, he is confident that things are improving.

"It is disappointing [the lack of Liverpool-born players in the first-team]," Fairclough tells ESPNsoccernet. "If you are from Liverpool, you are inclined to think, 'We need more Liverpudlians. We want our own in there'. Some would respond by claiming that football has changed now and that it's a global game, but I still think there's something in our make-up that says we want to have local lads, whether it be here or at Newcastle with an Andy Carroll leading their line. If we got another star man like Robbie Fowler or Steven Gerrard coming through, it would be utopia for the fans.

"I don't think the club has been running on clear lines over the last ten years when it comes to the young players. It's been very disappointing that the academy programme has not been running in conjunction with the first-team manager. I know that the set-up frustrated Steve Heighway [former Liverpool team-mate of Fairclough and academy director from 1989-2007] a lot because the club has had a lot of success in the Youth Cup in recent years but the younger players weren't encouraged through.

There are high hopes at Anfield for the likes of Martin Kelly and Thomas Ince
"Adam Hamill is a classic example. He won the Youth Cup in 2006 but was released last year having never played for the first team. He is at Barnsley now and is making waves up there - whether or not he's got the X-Factor to make it at the top we don't know yet, but he always had an awful lot of natural talent. When you watch him, he's exciting. Hammill was released by Benitez for being almost too much of a character, but he is just one player who we have lost who springs to mind. There have been others, too, who could have had a shot and in a Roy Hodgson era might have been thrown into the squad a bit more.

"Our transfer policy around the reserve team was absolutely barmy under Benitez. It was full of foreign players. You could go and watch the Liverpool reserves last year and there would be nine, ten foreign lads who were never going to make the grade for Liverpool in a million years. People like Nathan Eccleston couldn't even get a game in the reserves because the foreign boys got the nod."

Having been given a new mandate by Hodgson to take complete control of reserve-team affairs, McMahon set about making wholesale changes to the playing personnel over the summer, a process that Fairclough candidly describes as "sorting the wheat from the chaff". Of the foreign players involved in the reserves, Daniel Ayala, Peter Gulcalsi and Victor Palsson were sent out on loan, while Alexander Kacanklik, Lauri Dalla Valle, Damien Plessis, Vincent Weijl, Nabil El Zhar and Kristian Nemeth were all ushered out.

"John McMahon definitely deserves credit for the changes. He was working under very strict guidance from Benitez, always being told what to do, but then Roy came in and told him to take full responsibility for looking after the reserves. John made his recommendations about who should stay and who should go and it's no surprise that a lot of the young players who didn't have a hope have now been released. Now you've got a reserve team with an English core, which is a move in the right direction.


"A lot of younger players featured for the first-team in pre-season and that was encouraging. One or two have just faded back a little bit. [Thomas] Ince has gone out on loan and [David] Amoo is stranded in the reserves a little bit, but I think it has been really encouraging that they've had a go.

"Obviously you can't just throw six young lads in there every week and expect them all to make it, but I think there are a couple on the fringes who are capable of being regular members of the squad. Whether all this has come directly from Roy I'm not sure, but we've been carrying a lot of foreign deadwood in the reserves over the last couple of years and fortunately that has now been sorted."

The involvement of Eccleston, Jonjo Shelvey, Jay Spearing and Martin Kelly in the first-team this season has been a positive step forward in Liverpool's bid to nurture more homegrown talent, with supporters likely to be particularly pleased with the progress of Spearing and Kelly, who were both born and raised on Merseyside. But while Fairclough is understandably delighted at the progress of the Reds' English contingent, he admits that two of the club's hottest prospects are Spanish imports Dani Pacheco and highly-rated fledgling playmaker Suso.

"I've watched all of Dani's Liverpool career and he has got an awful lot of ability. He's exciting and, while I wouldn't quite compare him to Messi, he is that sort of flair player who can create things when playing in the hole. In the cameo roles he played last year, he made a big impression on Liverpool fans and I think they want to see a little bit more from him.

"I think he warrants a little bit more playing time as someone like him can really lift the crowd. I think he has been unlucky this season as he played wide on the right against both Northampton and Steaua Bucharest - he looked like a fish out of water. He has to be playing in behind a striker, where he starred for the Spain at the Under-19s European Championship over the summer.

"They've also got a new young lad called Suso, who plays in a similar position to Pacheco. He came from Cadiz and is very much in the mould of an old European No. 10, a real playmaker. He is only 16 and a half but is a really exciting talent, an excellent prospect."

While the changes implemented so far by Hodgson and McMahon are admirable, football is a results-based business and the failure of Liverpool's youngsters to make an obvious difference in what has been a difficult season suggests there is a long way to go before fans can start to dream of Spearing and Kelly lifting the Champions League trophy aloft a la Gerrard and Carragher.

LINK!

[mrt]

Would like to have kept hold of Kacaniklic.  Looked more of a threat, to me, than Ince or Amoo.  I'm all for bringing local lads through but not just for the sake of it.

[Cool Hand Luke]

Andras Simon leaves Liverpool

http://www.skysports.com/story....BC.html

Hungarian striker Andras Simon has left Liverpool after terminating his contract by mutual consent.

Simon, who enjoyed a spell on loan at Cordoba last season, has failed to make the breakthrough at Anfield and never made a senior appearance for the club.

The 20-year-old's agent, Viktor Kovesdi, claims Roy Hodgson's desire to promote homegrown talent at Anfield ahead of foreign players was the main reason for his departure.

"The player had a three plus two year-long contract which was extended automatically last summer, but his future became unclear after the change in manager at Liverpool," Kovesdi told origo.hu.

"The successor of Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson puts the English players to the forefront instead of the footballers from abroad.

"This approach can be seen at the reserves because some of Simon's team-mates from abroad have departed from the club lately" - the agent told www.origo.hu.

German side Alemannia Aachen are thought to be keen on signing Simon and have offered to take the player on trial.

[Fauxy]

New vid of Suso's passing by Milankakabaros.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL3HfYN1jD4


If he can pull these passes off at just 17 years old, what is he gonna be like when hes older..

[metalhead]

Andras Simon leaves Liverpool

http://www.skysports.com/story....BC.html

Hungarian striker Andras Simon has left Liverpool after terminating his contract by mutual consent.

Simon, who enjoyed a spell on loan at Cordoba last season, has failed to make the breakthrough at Anfield and never made a senior appearance for the club.

The 20-year-old's agent, Viktor Kovesdi, claims Roy Hodgson's desire to promote homegrown talent at Anfield ahead of foreign players was the main reason for his departure.

"The player had a three plus two year-long contract which was extended automatically last summer, but his future became unclear after the change in manager at Liverpool," Kovesdi told origo.hu.

"The successor of Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson puts the English players to the forefront instead of the footballers from abroad.

"This approach can be seen at the reserves because some of Simon's team-mates from abroad have departed from the club lately" - the agent told www.origo.hu.

German side Alemannia Aachen are thought to be keen on signing Simon and have offered to take the player on trial.

You can see some pros and cons about this

Good to see that we are looking to build on our own academy, rather than going outside and buying youngsters - cost effective too.