I’d be interested to see how Koumetio, Beck and others are doing - hope someone can watch and report.
LFC Reserves & Youth Team Goals/Highlights
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I’d be interested to see how Koumetio, Beck and others are doing - hope someone can watch and report.
Didn't watch more than about 30 minutes (but saw the 3 goals). Our left-side defender (assume this was Owen Beck) - looked defensively very fragile to me. Bradley on the other side was much better in this game. I liked Clarkson - as did the commentators who singled him out as our best player. He had a muscle injury on 50 minutes and was subbed just prior to our third goal. Cain's was a very nice finish and I thought he played well. Morton's was a skilled finish as well.
He had a tough night. He was facing a fairly decent opponent, and sometimes was double teamed by Ballo and Rankine on that flank.
[article]The son of former Everton favourite Phil Jagielka has signed for Merseyside rivals Liverpool.
Zac, 13, is a versatile forward and is well thought of within the club’s academy having joined from a grassroots junior team.
Centre-back Jagielka made 385 appearances for Everton during 12 seasons at Goodison Park, but his boy will be turning out in the red of Liverpool’s Under-14s side.
Zac is said to be an all-round sportsman who also excels at golf, but sources believe he has a future in football.
Jagielka, who was capped 40 times by England, left Everton for hometown club Sheffield United in 2019.
The 38-year-old has played six times this season, including a man-of-the-match performance during the Blades’ 2-1 win at Manchester United last month.
[/article]
[article]Dominic Corness' gifted left foot earned him the nickname 'The Wand' throughout Liverpool's youth set-up.
The midfielder has caught the eye for Marc Bridge-Wilkinson's U18s this season with his overall play and sublime execution from set-pieces.
Living up to his tag, the Scouser scored directly from a corner on two occasions in the same game back in September.
Having joined the Academy at the age of five, Corness has progressed through the ranks at Kirkby – earning his alias along the way – and signed his first professional contract with the club earlier this month.
"This has been a nickname for years now," 'The Wand' tells Liverpoolfc.com. "All the coaches at the Academy over time have just given me the nickname due to my passing and the things I do with my left foot really. It's not bad at all.
"It's just carried on over time and it's still going now. I think it was around the age of 12 or 13 and it's carried right through to the U18s."
Read on for more from our interview with Corness in the latest edition of our Meet the Academy series...
Let's start at the beginning. You've been at Liverpool since the age of five – how did that come about?
I played for my local team, Netherley Woodlane Legion, and I actually played with Layton Stewart as well. We both got brought into the Academy at the age of five. From then on, it's just been Liverpool through and through. I'm a Red myself and every single minute at the club is a dream come true.
Have you always been a midfielder?
No, I haven't. I used to be a left-back when I was younger. I only got moved into midfield when I was U14s. Sometimes I still do have a bit of exposure at left-back but I'm mainly a midfielder now.
Who do you look up to as a player?
I love to watch Thiago really. I just try to base myself off some of the things he does. Obviously he plays for the first team and that's just the level you want to try to get to. I just try to get on the ball as much as I can. I've always liked the way Thiago played. He came from Barça as well, so he automatically had that side of football where he just has the ball as much as he can and tries to play. I haven't seen him knocking about Kirkby yet, but with the new campus it's an opportunity every time you train now because you don't know who's watching. So you've just got to make every session the best you can because you never know what's going to happen.
How much do you work on set-pieces? It's apparent how much of a threat they pose in matches...
Set-pieces have been a massive part of my game throughout my whole time at the Academy. I've worked on them loads. Over the past one or two years, I've focused on them a lot more. I've had people working towards it with me, like Tyler Morton – the quality he has is unbelievable. So when I am working on set-pieces with him, the quality that he shows, it automatically improves my level as well. What we have been doing is just grab as many balls as you can after training – 10, 15 minutes – and just practise as much as you can. There's always balls everywhere at the end of the session!
As a Liverpool fan, did you go to the games much? What's the best game you've been to?
I used to go to the games all the time but due to COVID you can't anymore. I'd probably say the best game I've been to was Man City away in the Champions League quarter-finals a few years back. It was unbelievable. We used to be ballboys nearly every home game in the U15, U16 season. I never got any assists but I always used to put myself in the corner so I could get right up close to all the players when they were taking their set-pieces. It just gives you that drive and motivation to get where you want to be in many years to come. Being that close, it's just surreal. It's different on the telly, you don't realise until you're up close, you're just amazed and your breath is taken away every time.
What are your targets, short term and long term?
Short term, I've just signed my first professional contract, so I just want to kick on now and carry on doing what I'm doing. Hopefully try to take that jump to the U23s this season – if not, then next season it'll come as well. Long term, I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, try to progress as much as I can, and try to get close and around the first team, like other players have done.[/article]
Wonder who we will bring in - an ex-player?
[article]Gary O’Neil has joined the coaching staff at AFC Bournemouth and has been appointed as the club’s senior first team coach.
The incoming O’Neil joins from Liverpool, where he had been working as assistant manager with the club's under-23 squad.
During a successful near-20 year career as a professional, O'Neil played in the Premier League with Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, West Ham United and Norwich City, hanging his boots up at the end of the 2018/19 season after a stint with Bolton Wanderers.
During his playing career, O'Neil was promoted from the Championship on four separate occasions, experience he will be looking to bring to the Cherries' squad.
“I’ve known Gary for a number of years, having played with him at Middlesbrough,” said Cherries head coach Jonathan Woodgate.
“He comes highly recommended from Liverpool and has a great knowledge of the game and an appetite to never stop learning.
“Gary is going to bring something different to the coaching staff. He’s a new voice to the players, someone who has no connection to Bournemouth and I believe that an outside pair of eyes are important for us.
“I’m really looking forward to Gary joining our staff.”[/article]
[article]Gary O’Neil has joined the coaching staff at AFC Bournemouth and has been appointed as the club’s senior first team coach.
The incoming O’Neil joins from Liverpool, where he had been working as assistant manager with the club's under-23 squad.
During a successful near-20 year career as a professional, O'Neil played in the Premier League with Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, West Ham United and Norwich City, hanging his boots up at the end of the 2018/19 season after a stint with Bolton Wanderers.
During his playing career, O'Neil was promoted from the Championship on four separate occasions, experience he will be looking to bring to the Cherries' squad.
“I’ve known Gary for a number of years, having played with him at Middlesbrough,” said Cherries head coach Jonathan Woodgate.
“He comes highly recommended from Liverpool and has a great knowledge of the game and an appetite to never stop learning.
“Gary is going to bring something different to the coaching staff. He’s a new voice to the players, someone who has no connection to Bournemouth and I believe that an outside pair of eyes are important for us.
“I’m really looking forward to Gary joining our staff.”[/article]
Wish Glatzlel's injury woes are over him...
[article]As football has become more competitive, it has become harder for clubs to keep their best secrets under wraps.
Recruitment has become more difficult than ever as the huge clubs, and those with respected academies, scramble for talent in a condensed and competitive market.
The North West of England, in particular, is a football hotbed where such issues are prevalent.
Liverpool have to contend with Everton, Manchester United, Man City and Burnley just from the Premier League alone.
Further down the pyramid, Blackburn Rovers and Preston are also operating in the Championship, while Wigan Athletic are known in football circles for their proud academy record.
For clubs unable to count on the bankrolling of billionaire owners, it is becoming increasingly important to recruit youngsters with potential.
Given the level of scrutiny and interest in modern football, a club's most promising are often well known long before they are anywhere near a first-team debut too.
So, for a Greater Manchester-based Liverpool scout, to convince the next generation that their future could be at Anfield represents a significant challenge.
That, though, is precisely the job of Jon Newby, who heads up the club's talent spotting around that region.
Newby's remit is to find players between the age ranges of nine and 14 and bring suitable candidates to the Academy to begin the tentative steps towards, what is hoped, will be a life in professional football.
Despite the almost unique nature of the challenge, the former Liverpool striker is ideally placed to meet it head-on, given he came through the Anfield system and now resides in Bury where he keeps his eyes peeled for stars of the future.
"When I left Liverpool, I moved up here when I signed for Bury and after a wife and two kids later you can't get back home can you!" Newby tells the ECHO.
"So I am based in Greater Manchester and my remit is basically scouting players within that area on a full-time basis.
"Which is obviously relatively difficult because you have got competition from Manchester City and Manchester United.
"I watch players from other academies or grass-roots level and then will follow up on various players to see if we like them and think they have got the potential to be good enough for us.
"Nowadays, every young boy wants to be a professional footballer and a lot of clubs now are looking further afield.
"Being based where I am, a lot of the kids support United and City, so convincing a City fan or a United fan to come and join Liverpool will always have its challenges.
"I feel I am quite well-placed because I came through the system, I came through the club and I kind of know what it takes to get there.
"I am fairly well-placed to hopefully convince the parents and the boys that Liverpool is the club for them."
While Liverpool's transfer activity has slowed significantly since 2018, when a record-breaking spend of around £250m was invested in the first team across the calendar year, the club's Academy has consistently replenished the ranks.
Since last summer alone, Liverpool have added eight teenagers to their Academy system.
Fabian Mrozek, Mateusz Musialowski, Melkamu Frauendorf and goalkeeper Marcelo Pitaluga joined in the warmer months, before Calum Scanlon and Stefan Bajcetic were confirmed by the end of December.
Another goalkeeper, Liam Hughes, joined from Celtic on transfer deadline day.
Perhaps most excitingly for fans, Liverpool brought in Kaide Gordon to their junior ranks from Derby County.
The 16-year-old is viewed as one of the best players of his age in the country and continues the ongoing search for teenage talent that has seen them sign Sepp van den Berg and, more prominently, Harvey Elliott in the last couple of years.
Elliott's thrilling loan spell with Blackburn Rovers so far has got fans excited for what the 17-year-old will one day be able to produce in a Liverpool first-team shirt.
However, for every Elliott - the Premier League's youngest-ever debutant - there are countless others who move on before they are able to make the grade at a club the size of Liverpool.
Players are not always recruited with the sole purpose of starring in the first team at Anfield.
While that will always be the main aim, the reality is youngsters are coached, trained and improved with the potential to one day turn a profit too.
"We’re not a charity, so I don’t expect the club to keep giving us money every year and us not pay it back," Academy director Alex Inglethorpe said last year.
"We’ve got to be a self-sustaining business and contribute and pay our way. We can do that in a variety of ways.
"The most linear is to get someone straight into our first team, so thank you Trent for that. Another way might be for someone who doesn’t quite make the first team to be sold and generate some money.
"That’s people like Rafa Camacho or Ryan Kent or Brad Smith or Jordon Ibe."
Newby says such a business model is "quite natural" for clubs operating in the same stratosphere as the current Premier League champions.
Standards are high and the level of player required to succeed make it incredibly difficult for young hopefuls.
It's a predicament that is not unique to Anfield but opportunities for young wannabes decreases the higher up the football food chain you go.
"I think it's quite natural and we understand that as the Academy gets higher up it is a business," says Newby, who joined the club as a scout in 2014.
"There's a lot of investment that goes into the Academy from the owners, so we need to make sure that we're producing players and that will always be the challenge.
"If, long term, we can produce players from the Academy that can save the club going out and spending £8m on various players across Europe then that investment in the Academy is fully justified.
"There's no set number on how many we'd bring in or a certain amount, it's just if we have that quality that we see, we will look to do something."
Under the new post-Brexit transfer rules, Liverpool are not able to sign overseas players under the age of 18 now the UK has left the European Union.
That in itself presents more obstacles for elite clubs searching for first-team players of the future.
It might, however, mean that more focus will be given, in time, to recruiting the most eye-catching talents from across the country as European dealings become more fraught with potential problems.
But what is it exactly that Liverpool scouts are looking for in players who are still in junior school?
And how do they ensure that recruits are still able to enjoy football during their formative years?
Newby says: "I think now there is a lot more to look at, so I think athleticism is obviously key in football now.
"We look for that and then the mental side too, even though I know it is difficult to tell at such a young age.
"We look to see if they have a natural enthusiasm to play the game? Do they have a desire to try and win? And then see if they have relatively good technique.
"But with the program that we've got that Alex sets through the Academy and the coaches that we have got, we feel the coaches will always improve those players.
"The biggest thing, honestly, at the age of nine is kids have got to enjoy it.
"They are at the Academy so much with playing three nights a week and then playing at the weekend that there's possibly going to come a time with some players where they maybe don't enjoy football because they are doing so much of it.
"So it is vital for us that we keep their enjoyment at the early ages.
"We almost want to be seen as the most enjoyable Sunday League team if you like but with that added quality. We want the kids to come bouncing in with their enthusiasm ready to play.
"I think a player at the age of 13 or 14, certainly 14, has more of an identity. As a nine-year-old, you don't even really know what position some of these boys are going to play.
"But at 14, they are starting to get that identity of where you see them on the pitch and they have matured that little bit, so you have more of an idea.
"But I think anyone who says they can tell if a player is going to play professional football at the age of nine is wrong because I've seen throughout my career players who were exceptional at nine and never went on and played professional football."
For Liverpool, though, their recent track record in blooding youngsters into the first-team fold under Jurgen Klopp is impressive.
The Reds' 1-0 win over Ajax in December might have been a big victory for Klopp as they secured qualification to the knockout stages of the Champions League, but it was an even more sizable one for staff at Kirkby.
Former Under-23 captain Curtis Jones bagged the winner from a Neco Williams cross as Caoimhin Kelleher kept watch in goal.
That trio have followed in the footsteps of Trent Alexander-Arnold this season, who, as a Champions League and Premier League winner at the age of 22, is the Academy's poster-boy for the modern era.
"There's an awful lot of planning that goes into it all," Newby says.
"A goalkeeper could be signed at 16 or 17, for example, and we could have been watching him since the Under-13s and have that many reports going back on him a few years.
"Obviously we'd hand that over to the scouts above us and then they would do their homework, so there are a lot of joined-up things when players arrive.
"We had a look around the new training ground and first of all the facilities are absolutely magnificent, it's night and day when I was playing 20 years ago and I do think that as a young player it will help you.
"Because now you know, as an Under-23 or an Under-18 player who the manager is and that he is going to occasionally come and watch you.
"From my own personal opinion, if you can see the pathway - and there are a lot of young players playing for our first team at the minute - then you are on the same site as the first team, it doesn't half give you an incentive.
"We don't want to look too far ahead with the parents of 10-year-old boys because we don't know where they're going to get to.
"But for our first-team to show that they're willing to play our young players if they are good enough...to see Trent, to see Curtis, Neco, Rhys Williams, Nat Phillips, to see these players around the first team is a big boost for every young player that is at our Academy or maybe wanting to join our Academy.
"It's a massive boost to know that the manager and the owners trust our Academy to provide players for them."
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I wouldn't worry. We'll be buying plenty before they reach 1st Team squad level.
"First team manager Jurgen Klopp is at Kirkby with the first team cheering on the youngsters."
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