Liverpool FC Forum

by **tubby** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:58 am

I was really happy to see Spearing come on against Madrid. To be honest I wouldn't mind if we sold Lucas and just brought in Spearing in place of him. But I really hope Nemeth and Pacheco can make the grade too. Are they not both 18 now? Id expect to see them in the carling cup next year.

by **Bad Bob** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:08 pm

Thread re-named and moved. All news and discussion about the reserves now welcomed in here...especially from those who have the opportunity and take the time to watch the lads.

by **bunglemark2** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:23 pm

Bualadh bos, Bob...(FYI, that means "round of applause")

by **bigmick** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:47 pm

Well clearly our record in bringing youngsters through to the first team over the last few years isn't very good. Whether or not it's Rafa's fault, steve Heighways, Gary Abletts, Rick Parry's or mine isn't clear, but there hasn't been a rich seam of up and comers bursting through. Even blokes who we've bought specifically for the fringe of the first team in order to speed the whole process up haven't really impressed, and I'm talking about blokes like Babel, Lucas, Leto etc.

Now it seems to me, and sorry for stating the obvious that at least one of the following points is the case. Either we are buying the wrong players in the first place, we aren't developing them as well as some other teams do, we've been unlucky in that it just so happens we've taken a gamble on the wrong kids, or our team is so good that no youngster can break into it.

I think it's a combination of the first three.

by **bunglemark2** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:56 pm

Makes you wonder Mick how much one should read into a young player's reputation before launching a bid with ridiculous sums of money on a player with "potential"...
I sem to recall a number of clubs avidly pursuing Babel at the time. Perhaps it's the assumption that because he played in a country that gave the world "total football", that he has unquestionable pace, he's tall etc....a lot of clubs believed he was the next God! How far from the truth that has proven to be...Perhaps we were guilty of believing the hype (we know a song about that, Ted

)
As for Lucas, one would assume that the captain of the Brazil U21's would have that little something about him. Again, nothing seems to be further from the truth.
In previous seasons, there was the young lad from Chile...truly hopeless I have to say....

So where are we going wrong so constantly ? I think one of your questions should read "are the right people looking at the right players in the right clubs" ?

by **bigmick** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:19 pm

bunglemark2 wrote:Makes you wonder Mick how much one should read into a young player's reputation before launching a bid with ridiculous sums of money on a player with "potential"...
I sem to recall a number of clubs avidly pursuing Babel at the time. Perhaps it's the assumption that because he played in a country that gave the world "total football", that he has unquestionable pace, he's tall etc....a lot of clubs believed he was the next God! How far from the truth that has proven to be...Perhaps we were guilty of believing the hype (we know a song about that, Ted )
As for Lucas, one would assume that the captain of the Brazil U21's would have that little something about him. Again, nothing seems to be further from the truth.
In previous seasons, there was the young lad from Chile...truly hopeless I have to say....

So where are we going wrong so constantly ? I think one of your questions should read "are the right people looking at the right players in the right clubs" ?

But there are no mysteries these days with kids. People often talk of managers (Wenger usually) "discovering" kids, but unless you're talking about young African lads it's extremely rare, and even then it's rarer than it used to be.

Players like Babel were very well known and had been for a few years. All the big clubs will have checked him out, but we were the ones who went and paid/spunked 11 million quid on him. he's an interesting case in point, because he epitomises the dilemma in assessing our system.

Clearly he has ability of some type (and also as a footballer, not just as a DJ) as he's shown it in flashes. Clearly he was highly thought of before he came, because the World and his brother looked at him.

That he hasn't in horse racing parlance "trained on" though is beyond dispute (unless you're a Babelian

) so who's fault is it? Is it just one of those things which you can't predict, some players develop and some don't? Is it our fault for buying the wrong bloke, our fault for not handling him right, or his fault for being a little bit of a toolpiece?

As Wenger often crops up in these conversations, it's interesting to compare Babel to Walcott as they cost a similar amount . Once again the world and his brother had a look, but like with Aaron Ramsey (and fair enough Francis Jeffers as well) it was Wenger who was prepared to gamble on British talent. Walcott promptly disappeared, save for his cameo in a World Cup when ridiculously selected by Englands manager at the time. He has been nurtured though, and is finally emerging as a potentially top player.

You could alos compare Lucas with Flamini or Fabregas, or this Song or Diabi I guess, both who still have it all to prove. So far though, compare with who you like but we haven't got it right I think it's fair to say.

by **tubby** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:21 pm

I don't think we are buying the right players. Even if was down to the fact that we are not nurturing them well talent is talent and that talent would have shone through despite it.

I would imagine scouting for competition is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago and even when buying young you have to sometimes spend more. We always go for cheaper rate players for the first team bar a few so im sure the same applies for when buying young players. When it comes to talanted youngsters we are not even in the market for them as we cannot afford it. As someone pointed out earlier utd bought 2 kids recently for around 20Mil in total. We just about paid that for Torres and even then we didn't even buy him proper. It was just debt on the club.

Until we have an owner who can match up to the other big teams in terms of spending we will always be stuggling to keep pace with them. That goes for the youth as well. And until we do we cannot moan about it either becasue the simple fact is we are giving Rafa enough for a McDonalds and asking him to bring back Burger King.

by **Owzat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:24 pm

fergie and Wenger seem to get it more right than wrong, what Wenger does is brilliant regards bringing through brilliant young players. I guess his hand is forced a bit by wage limitations and his tight budget. I think we have more of a "throw enough darts at the board and you're bound to hit a bull" approach, what with our squad size etc. You can't really criticise fergie, he might spend more on young players, but look at some of them. They and Arsenal can put out a kiddy XI and compete in the Carling Cup, we put out reserves and can struggle.

But what you have to consider is the clubs that produce these kids are no mugs, they know good players. Maybe Rafa's hands are tied whenever figures get a bit rich for us, a club unprepared to take a risk even though you do that every time you spend £5m, £11.5m or £19m on a player who's older but still flops. If a club wants £10m or £12.24m for a player then they are probably worth it, unless they happen to be Ryan Babel.

We'll bring enough kids through and sell them to balance the books. What worries me a bit is looking at the manc squad ages and comparing to our's. There squad is younger on average, only slightly, but bear in mind they have five players over 30 (VDS is 38!) to our two, they're doing pretty well to lower their average age.

by **tubby** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:24 pm

bigmick wrote:You could alos compare Lucas with Flamini or Fabregas, or this Song or Diabi I guess, both who still have it all to prove. So far though, compare with who you like but we haven't got it right I think it's fair to say.

Id take any Flamini or Diabi over Lucas any day of the week. Not meaning to disrespect him but the guy is a liability and is not good enough for this team. Very rarley does he play and we play well, and if we do it's probably more down to the talents of Torres or Gerrard or someone else papering over his cracks.

by **bigmick** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:25 pm

bavlondon wrote:I don't think we are buying the right players. Even if was down to the fact that we are not nurturing them well talent is talent and that talent would have shone through despite it.

I would imagine scouting for competition is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago and even when buying young you have to sometimes spend more. We always go for cheaper rate players for the first team bar a few so im sure the same applies for when buying young players. When it comes to talanted youngsters we are not even in the market for them as we cannot afford it. As someone pointed out earlier utd bought 2 kids recently for around 20Mil in total. We just about paid that for Torres and even then we didn't even buy him proper. It was just debt on the club.

Until we have an owner who can match up to the other big teams in terms of spending we will always be stuggling to keep pace with them. That goes for the youth as well. And until we do we cannot moan about it either becasue the simple fact is we are giving Rafa enough for a McDonalds and asking him to bring back Burger King.

I'm sorry but I don't thing the money thing can simply be trotted out as an excuse time after time. We paid 11 million quid for Babel two years ago, which is a lot by anyones language. Lucas at 5 was a significant investment in terms of unproven youth as well.

One again i ask the question, where's S@int whe you need him. I've no doubt he'd point out and demonstrate that we spend comparable amounts on youngsters (only we buy more of them numerically) to other teams.

by **Owzat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:36 pm

bigmick wrote:
bavlondon wrote:I don't think we are buying the right players. Even if was down to the fact that we are not nurturing them well talent is talent and that talent would have shone through despite it.

I would imagine scouting for competition is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago and even when buying young you have to sometimes spend more. We always go for cheaper rate players for the first team bar a few so im sure the same applies for when buying young players. When it comes to talanted youngsters we are not even in the market for them as we cannot afford it. As someone pointed out earlier utd bought 2 kids recently for around 20Mil in total. We just about paid that for Torres and even then we didn't even buy him proper. It was just debt on the club.

Until we have an owner who can match up to the other big teams in terms of spending we will always be stuggling to keep pace with them. That goes for the youth as well. And until we do we cannot moan about it either becasue the simple fact is we are giving Rafa enough for a McDonalds and asking him to bring back Burger King.

I'm sorry but I don't thing the money thing can simply be trotted out as an excuse time after time. We paid 11 million quid for Babel two years ago, which is a lot by anyones language. Lucas at 5 was a significant investment in terms of unproven youth as well.

One again i ask the question, where's S@int whe you need him. I've no doubt he'd point out and demonstrate that we spend comparable amounts on youngsters (only we buy more of them numerically) to other teams.

Getting definitive transfer figures is hard enough on older players, on kids it is often near impossible. "undisclosed" and "nominal" are two words I hate the sight of.

Those two serbian kids reportedly cost £16.3m between them, Nani and Anderson reportedly cost £30m between them, so I think there's little doubt fergie spends much bigger on young players than any club in this country. But look how important Anderson and Nani are to the mancs already, and neither is 23 yet. Ronaldo is 24, cost just £12.24m. Macheda isn't quite 18 yet and he landed with a bang in the Premiership and saved their sorry a'rses.

What have we on the brink of 1st team football or in the squad under 23? Lucas, a bit part midfielder who is useful but not phenomenal, Spearing, Kelly and Darby who get talked about a lot more than they play, Pacheco who hasn't been near the 1st team, Plessis who plays a game or two a season, Lindfield who is loaned out to the lower divisions mostly, and three players bought a while back who've been on loan mostly since - Hobbs, Martin and Anderson.

Doesn't really matter how much you spend on the players as long as there is a purpose. The mancs bring their youngsters into the squad and they settle quickly, we buy them, talk about them and never see them! Is that because they're far inferior, because Rafa doesn't trust them to perform (yet) or both? When the mancs sell their younger players they are much sought after, our's are linked with Leicester, Accrington and all kinds of lower league clubs.

So come on S@int, come out of retirement and quote us some names and numbers

by **bunglemark2** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:38 pm

Owzat wrote:
bigmick wrote:
bavlondon wrote:I don't think we are buying the right players. Even if was down to the fact that we are not nurturing them well talent is talent and that talent would have shone through despite it.

I would imagine scouting for competition is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago and even when buying young you have to sometimes spend more. We always go for cheaper rate players for the first team bar a few so im sure the same applies for when buying young players. When it comes to talanted youngsters we are not even in the market for them as we cannot afford it. As someone pointed out earlier utd bought 2 kids recently for around 20Mil in total. We just about paid that for Torres and even then we didn't even buy him proper. It was just debt on the club.

Until we have an owner who can match up to the other big teams in terms of spending we will always be stuggling to keep pace with them. That goes for the youth as well. And until we do we cannot moan about it either becasue the simple fact is we are giving Rafa enough for a McDonalds and asking him to bring back Burger King.

I'm sorry but I don't thing the money thing can simply be trotted out as an excuse time after time. We paid 11 million quid for Babel two years ago, which is a lot by anyones language. Lucas at 5 was a significant investment in terms of unproven youth as well.

One again i ask the question, where's S@int whe you need him. I've no doubt he'd point out and demonstrate that we spend comparable amounts on youngsters (only we buy more of them numerically) to other teams.

Getting definitive transfer figures is hard enough on older players, on kids it is often near impossible. "undisclosed" and "nominal" are two words I hate the sight of.

Those two serbian kids reportedly cost £16.3m between them, Nani and Anderson reportedly cost £30m between them, so I think there's little doubt fergie spends much bigger on young players than any club in this country. But look how important Anderson and Nani are to the mancs already, and neither is 23 yet. Ronaldo is 24, cost just £12.24m. Macheda isn't quite 18 yet and he landed with a bang in the Premiership and saved their sorry a'rses.

What have we on the brink of 1st team football or in the squad under 23? Lucas, a bit part midfielder who is useful but not phenomenal, Spearing, Kelly and Darby who get talked about a lot more than they play, Pacheco who hasn't been near the 1st team, Plessis who plays a game or two a season, Lindfield who is loaned out to the lower divisions mostly, and three players bought a while back who've been on loan mostly since - Hobbs, Martin and Anderson.

Doesn't really matter how much you spend on the players as long as there is a purpose. The mancs bring their youngsters into the squad and they settle quickly, we buy them, talk about them and never see them! Is that because they're far inferior, because Rafa doesn't trust them to perform (yet) or both? When the mancs sell their younger players they are much sought after, our's are linked with Leicester, Accrington and all kinds of lower league clubs.

So come on S@int, come out of retirement and quote us some names and numbers

We want Saint ! We want Saint ! We want Saint ! We want Saint !

:bowdown

by **tubby** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:39 pm

bigmick wrote:
bavlondon wrote:I don't think we are buying the right players. Even if was down to the fact that we are not nurturing them well talent is talent and that talent would have shone through despite it.

I would imagine scouting for competition is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago and even when buying young you have to sometimes spend more. We always go for cheaper rate players for the first team bar a few so im sure the same applies for when buying young players. When it comes to talanted youngsters we are not even in the market for them as we cannot afford it. As someone pointed out earlier utd bought 2 kids recently for around 20Mil in total. We just about paid that for Torres and even then we didn't even buy him proper. It was just debt on the club.

Until we have an owner who can match up to the other big teams in terms of spending we will always be stuggling to keep pace with them. That goes for the youth as well. And until we do we cannot moan about it either becasue the simple fact is we are giving Rafa enough for a McDonalds and asking him to bring back Burger King.

I'm sorry but I don't thing the money thing can simply be trotted out as an excuse time after time. We paid 11 million quid for Babel two years ago, which is a lot by anyones language. Lucas at 5 was a significant investment in terms of unproven youth as well.

One again i ask the question, where's S@int whe you need him. I've no doubt he'd point out and demonstrate that we spend comparable amounts on youngsters (only we buy more of them numerically) to other teams.

But it is an excuse. When we had an option on Ronaldo we could only afford 5 or 6 when Utd paid 12.

Walcott only cost 12Mil but we didn't even get involved. Why? Because he was so young it would have hurt us to lose that kind of money on a flop. Not that we haven't lost money on flops in the past but spending 5mil on Lucas doesnt mean we are prepared to pay for talent.

Part of the problem is also the people doing the scouting are not good enough. Im sure in a slower less physical league Lucas would do better but over here he struggles in almost every game.

Id say Wenger is better at spotting players more suited to this league than Rafa. The only way Rafa is guaranteed to buy better players is if he is allowed to spend more in 1 go like we saw for Torres or Mascherano. Having said that he does get bargains sometimes - Alonso, Agger.

What im saying is Mick the problem is partly down to the scouting not being good enough and the other part is we dont spend the money we should be on youth.

by **Owzat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:01 pm

bavlondon wrote:But it is an excuse. When we had an option on Ronaldo we could only afford 5 or 6 when Utd paid 12.

Walcott only cost 12Mil but we didn't even get involved. Why? Because he was so young it would have hurt us to lose that kind of money on a flop. Not that we haven't lost money on flops in the past but spending 5mil on Lucas doesnt mean we are prepared to pay for talent.

Part of the problem is also the people doing the scouting are not good enough. Im sure in a slower less physical league Lucas would do better but over here he struggles in almost every game.

Id say Wenger is better at spotting players more suited to this league than Rafa. The only way Rafa is guaranteed to buy better players is if he is allowed to spend more in 1 go like we saw for Torres or Mascherano. Having said that he does get bargains sometimes - Alonso, Agger.

What im saying is Mick the problem is partly down to the scouting not being good enough and the other part is we dont spend the money we should be on youth.

We could have afforded Ronaldo had we not been wasting money like water on the likes of Heskey (£11m) etc. I can understand apprehension at paying double figure millions for a young player, but if you wait until they become great then the figure can go from £12.24m to £70m or whatever the latest reported bids are in the pipeline.

I was of the understanding Walcott only cost £5m with add-ons to follow. Arsenal aren't cash splashers so for them to buy him he had to have talent, especially given Wenger's track record with kids - a reputation only bested by certain pop-stars. According to wikipedia it was £5m rising to £12m based on appearances, international caps etc, but the saints had to settle for a £9.1m settlement to get the cash sooner rather than wait.

Ultimately Walcott signed for Arsenal in January 2006 for an initial fee of £5m rising to a possible £12m[8] based on appearances for club and country, making him the most expensive 16 year old in the history of British football.[9] In April 2008, financial pressures forced Southampton to accept an early settlement which means that Walcott will actually have cost Arsenal around £9.1 million. The new deal is understood to involve an immediate payment to Southampton of £1.6 million followed by a further £500,000 later in the year added to the £7 million that Arsenal had already paid.[10][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Walcott

Maybe to invest properly in youth we'd have to spend less on the 1st team squad, not an issue for the mancs despite being in debt. Maybe if we stopped splashing out £11.5m for Babel, £14m for Cisse, £20.3m for Keane, £7m for Dossena etc and took half that money and took a gamble on a kid instead of the many gambles we do on older players, we might have signed a Ronaldo by now. How many of our summer signings paid off? One, Riera for £8m. What about the rest of the £40m Rafa spent? We're no more certain a player will succeed when we spend £20.3m on an established Premiership player like Keane, than the mancs were paying £12.24m on a young superkid like Ronaldo. They bought Veron for £28.1m, look how that worked out.

Maybe we don't have the money to spend than the mancs do, but they seem to spend their's much more wisely and end up with less players coming and going in a season or two.

He was first spotted by then-Liverpool manager Gérard Houllier at sixteen, but Liverpool declined to take him on because they decided he was too young and needed some time to develop his skills.[10] However, he came to the attention of Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson in the summer of 2003, when Sporting defeated United 3–1 in the inauguration of the Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon. Ronaldo's performance impressed the Manchester United players, who urged Ferguson to sign him.[11]

Not quite the "couldn't afford" I and others would have expected to see. Sounds like the biggest gaffe in football history, deciding he was too young and risk either paying a lot more or losing him to another club. Should have bought him and loaned him back as part of the deal, I knew Houllier was a bit Clouseau, but I didn't realise he was that Clouseau.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristiano_Ronaldo

by **tubby** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:11 pm

Ok maybe not an outright case of couldnt afford. But due to us spending poorly in the past we are then later faced with the 'cant afford' senario when we do need to spend a bit more than normal. Even with the add ons its still 12 mil, doesnt make a difference as he is a quality player who will no doubt make the number of appearances or score goals required to meet those criteria. It's too easy to look in hindsight 'had we not bought this player'.

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