Steve Heighway returns to LFC

[the count]

Heighway makes full-time Academy return

Steve Hunter@Shunter77
Liverpool Football Club are delighted to announce that Steve Heighway has returned to the Academy on a full-time basis as a consultant.
The Reds legend guided the likes of Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard into the first team during a remarkable 18-year stint as head of youth development at the club, which ended when he retired in 2007.
Academy director Alex Inglethorpe first looked to tap into that experience in January 2015, when he asked Heighway to take up a part-time role at the Kirkby complex.
Now, the former midfielder, who made 475 appearances in a red shirt between 1970 and 1981, will again play a key role in helping develop young players for the Reds after accepting the offer to return full-time.
Reflecting on the decision, Heighway said: “I had to think about it. Obviously my lifestyle has changed since I made the decision to leave all those years ago, and I have had a fantastic six or seven years travelling all around the world and doing a lot of coaching.
“[But] Alex [Inglethorpe] is a persuasive man.
“It was difficult to leave in the first place, but I had something like 28 or 29 consecutive years of coaching kids and dealing with kids, dealing with parents and running this place [the Academy].”
Explaining what will be expected of him in his new consultancy role, the former Republic of Ireland international added: “I’m pretty clear what Alex wants from me, particularly working with the 15- and 16-year-olds. We are calling it a consultancy.
“I must make it very clear that I’m not in charge and I’m not Alex’s assistant in any way and there’s terrific staff here. Each team has their own coach and they are all very, very good. I guess my job is to try to see is there anything I can add to that?
“Because my position is to not directly coach a team or not to have any responsibility for any management or organisational activities at the Academy, is there anything I can provide that is over and above what is already being provided?
“That might be contact time with an individual boy, it might be contact time with groups of boys, it might be in the lecture theatre talking about different aspects of the game.
“Alex might want me to speak with a parent, as I’ve spent my life doing that, so maybe I can be the icing on the cake. But I must stress that the staff Alex has in place with all of the teams are very, very good and they have welcomed me with open arms.
“I’ve been very happy all of my life, doing what I’ve been doing. I’ve been very, very fortunate to be a player at Liverpool, then eight years in the USA learning to coach, then 20 years here running this place, then another five or six years in the USA coaching and now back here.”
Heighway, who turns 68 next month, expects to strike up a fruitful relationship with Inglethorpe as the two share the same ethos when it comes to the development of young players.
He continued: “Alex shares those values and that’s why it’s been very easy for me to say yes. I like working under Alex’s leadership, and he does give leadership to this place.
“His values are exactly the same as mine, there’s no question about that. The kids have to be good people as well as good players.”
Meanwhile, Inglethorpe spoke of the 'inspirational' influence of having such an important figure in the Academy's history present on a regular basis.
He said: “I think everyone would agree who has had the chance to work and speak with Steve, that his influence around the place has been inspirational.
“He is incredibly knowledgeable and he is really happy to share that knowledge as well, which is important because he is very giving of his time and his ideas.
“Steve is someone I can learn from, everyone can learn from, so for us to have a mentor in the building like him is terrific.
“His best quality is he genuinely loves the game and the players and that comes through, and they know that.
“The players and coaches have his approval and they want to impress him, which is a mark of a very talented coach and man.
“We feel very fortunate to have Steve back with us at Liverpool.”

 

[Red Astaire]

Great news.

 

[hmmmmm1]

Why did he leave

 

[leftpeg]

Very happy with that.

 

[Red Astaire]

Why did he leave

I thought he retired.

 

[King Binny]

MK Dons Manager Karl Robinson (dated 2013)
[article]FORMER Liverpool Academy coach Karl Robinson has spoken about the influence of Steve Heighway on his blossoming career.

The 32-year-old MK Dons boss, whose side travel to QPR in the FA Cup today, worked under Reds legend Heighway at Kirkby prior to becoming the youngest Football League manager in 2010.

“Steve was an unbelievable coach,” said Robinson. “He once had a go at a 13-year-old and the kid sulked. And Heighway said to him ‘You are playing for Liverpool Football Club, with 45,000 fanatical fans, and you can’t handle me having a go at you?’ He was already getting into their heads.

“This is a ruthless industry. You either accept criticism and use it as a motivational tool or you fall away. I learnt to be ruthless, and kind as well, from him.”[/article]

Robbie Fowler (Fowler: My Autobiography published 2005)
[article]Steve Heighway was always very good to me and me dad and we always got on very very well with him. Kenny brought him nack to Anfield to replace Mal Cook and run the Centre of Excellence, and he was brilliant for all the lads.

I always had a great deal of respect for Steve Heighway, because he treated the lads properly, always did the right thing and always had the welfare of the kids at heart, which is more than one or two of the coaches at Anfield when I was coming through the ranks. It made me laugh, years later, when I heard stories of Gerard Houllier saying they'd not had any decent kids through, and that they spent millions on academy for no benefit. In the next breath, Houllier would suggest that he found Steven Gerrard, and brought him into the first team. I saw him say that on the telly more than once, that he found Stevie. Where did he find him? In the Liverpool reserves, and captaining the England under-19 side, that's where! I think he might even have played for the under-21s by then, as well. I'll tell you what, if you claim that as finding someone, then we could all be scouts.

Stevie, like me, was brought through the ranks by the patience and professionalism of Steve Heighway and his staff, who tried to teach the kids not just about football, but about how to behave properly, and become decent people. He's a kid like me from a council estate in Liverpool, and he's a star, not just on the pitch but off it too. He's a decent, smart bloke, and he got a lot of that from Steve Heighway and the academy staff at Liverpool. There was a picture taken when the academy opened properly of me, Macca, Dominic Matteo, Stevie G, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher and David Thompson, all kids that had been nutured by Steve Heighway and his staff, and a line-up that would cost a fair few million on the market. And there was Houllier moaning that he didn't have any kids coming through. The saddest thing of all is that after Houllier went through Anfield, there were only two of those kids left at the club.

I remember Steve Heighway took me and me dad up to Melwood once, to have a cup of tea and meet all the players and coaching staff. Kenny was there, of course, because he'd probably set it up, and we met everyone. We came away, the pair of us, thinking this was a homely club, with no airs and graces, and a good place for a kid to be brought up, which was probably the idea, I suppose. Kenny was pretty clever.

When I was a kid and hadn't even signed schoolboy forms, I used to go up there for the whole school summer holidays and train with the YTS lads, help them do all the jobs around the place and stuff like that. Steve Heighway let mee, even though he wasn't supposed to. It was a wonderful feeling, a schoolkid training like he was a professional, and even doing the boot cleaning and the brushing up felt as though it was the best job in the world. It was those little things that eventually persuaded me that Liverpool was the club I should sign for.

Souness told me years later that he just didn't like the way Thommo dealt with the kids that were coming through to the reserve team, didn't think it was the right introduction to Liverpool for them, and when he had the chance, he got rid of him. I heard stories from some of the other young lads back then, that Steve Heighway had laid into Thompson, really slaughtered him in front of the manager, and believe me, that is something because Steve Heighway is a gentleman and not the sort of bloke to go around laying ino people. I know one or two of the lads had gone to Steve and complained at the treatment they were getting when they moved up from the Cente of Excellence to the reserves, because some of them were my mates.[/article]

Steven Gerrard (dated 2014)
[article]Steven Gerrard has welcomed the return of former Liverpool Academy director Steve Heighway to the club on a part-time basis.

Heighway, who retired back in 2007, has been invited to do some coaching sessions with the under-9s by current Academy chief Alex Inglethorpe.

"Steve Heighway should never have left. That’s what I can’t understand at clubs,” said Gerrard.

“The managers change so often - there are not many Wengers or Fergusons (who stay for years) - but the structure of the academies should stay the same whoever the manager is of the first team. The manager shouldn’t have the power to change things every two or three years.

“Roy Hodgson, for example, could have turned the academy around here at Liverpool in six months and then left. The kids wouldn’t know whether they were coming or going. I don’t know what the right structure is but we need to find it and then keep it in place for the next 50 years so that the kids come through. And that should be the same at national level.”

Heighway won four league titles with the Reds as a player, and coached the Liverpool youth team to two successive FA Youth Cup wins.[/article]

 

[Red Astaire]

Great work @King Binny as always. Loved reading that. Thanks man.

 

[King Binny]

Jamie Carragher (Carra: My Autobiography published 2009)
[article]Before Kenny Dalglish appointed legendary ex-winger Steve Heighway to look after youth development, hardly any players had moved from the reserves into the first team for a decade. The School of Excellence, as it was, included many who'd been enticed to the club by Dalglish and Heighway. We continued to represent our Sunday League sides, but we'd head to Melwood once a week, staring at the shiny cars and smart clothes of the professionals in between training sessions. Knowing I'd be sharing the same pitch and dressing rooms with some of the world's greatest players was inspirational.

Heighway's appointment coincided with some spectacular discoveries. A flurry of us arrived around the same time in the 1990s, enhancing the club's reputation for nurturing local talent. Steve McManaman, Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard and I saved the club millions in transfer fees; others like Stephen Wright, Dominic Matteo, David Thompson and Stephen Warnock nade millions more through their sales.

Sadly, in recent years this conveyor belt, which was so prolific, has gorund to a halt.

If ever a coach paid for achieving too much too soon, it's Heighway. The proficiency with which local boys made the step up heaped pressure on him to unearth more of us on a season-by-season basis. Over ‎£10 million was spent on the new Academy, with extra millions committed annually, but the School of Excellence days were the club's most rewarding. Heighway eventually left Liverpool in 2007, despite winning two successive FA Youth Cups, partially because he was sick of the criticism. The split between The Academy and Melwood was unhealthy for the club and I felt the youth director was unfairly treated.

There were times I felt unless a youngster was as good as Stevie or Michael, our managers would be too quick to dismiss them, favouring some of their foreign imports who weren't any better than the Academy lads. And anyway, homegrown players of Gerrard's class come around once every thirty years at any one club. From the moment they make their debuts, they look like world-beaters. Mo was the best player in the side on the day he broke into the first team. Stevie walked into the same category. Their examples should have been enough to convince the senior management that if the quality was there, Heighway would find it and nurture it. Houllier and then Benitez were constantly at loggerheads with Heighway, and frustrated that players of first-team quality weren't arriving from the youth set-up every year. Both had experience of their own as youth coaches in France and Spain, so they resented having no influence in this sphere at Liverpool.

While I understand their sense of dissatisfaction, the club was right to trust Heighway. Managers come and go, but you've got to maintain continuity across as many levels of the club as possible. What was essentially a clash of personalities became something much bigger, and it was detrimental to Liverpool. Changing the youth set-up every few years when a manager leaves makes no sense. The key is for the youth director and manager to work together, but that became increasingly impossible as the conflict cast its shadow across the club. Given the lack of cooperation, it's no real surprise Steven Gerrard remains the last Academy success story, from as far back as 1999.

You could say many of these players moved elsewhere and did nothing to prove Liverpool's decision to offload them wrong. I reject this as a foolproof theory. Had they stayed at Anfield, they'd have played at a consistently higher level and inevitably improved. They were denied the same opportunities to develop their game as the rest of us.

Even if this line of reasoning was valid, for all those who weren't considered good enough, I'd suggest the ones who were more than made up for it. As a football club, we should have spent less time arguing with Heighway about what we didn't have and been more appreciative of what we did have. This was the argument Heighway was ready, willing and able to throw back at people whenever his methods were questioned. He was no shrinking violet. When you've delivered at least two of the greatest strikers in Liverpool history and arguably the best central midfielder in Europe, all within the space of a few years, you don't expect to have to justify yourself.

Both Houllier and Benitez would talk to me about their frustrations with Heighway. Maybe they were seeking confirmation I agreed with them. Perhaps they were trying to convince me of their responses. Then I'd look around the training pitch and see teenage 'gems' such as Djimi Traore, Sebastian Leto, Anthony Le Tallec, Grogory Vignal, Carl Madjani, Alou Diarra and Gabriel Palleta.

I have to admit it. Had I been forced to pick sides in this squabble, I'd have been standing alongside my former youth coach.

The longer I've been at Anfield, and the more I've seen teenagers come and go from abroad, the angrier I've become at hearing Heighway's work under so much attack. [/article]

Stephen Warnock
[article]I remember the first time I broke my leg was away at Tottenham and I was only 15. Steve Heighway looked after me in the hospital and took care of me and drove me back home. I just remember that to be honest, the first one didn’t affect me at all, I remember thinking, ‘oh right, I’ll just get back from this and it’ll be fine’.

I came back after about 10 months and I did it where I train now, on the front pitch at Leeds – I broke it again and I can remember thinking I can’t do that again. I cried in the hospital all night and I just thought I can’t go through this again. And then I came back to Liverpool to have an operation at the hospital and Rick Parry came and saw me with Steve Heighway and they both offered me a three-year professional contract as a bit of an incentive to get back and to be honest from that moment on I thought, ‘right okay, I’ll get back playing and try to repay the faith that they had shown in me by getting back fit.

I still ring him for advice now on moves, on situations at clubs and what he thinks I should do, things like that. I think if you speak to the likes of Carra and Stevie as well, they probably still speak to him as well, he’s that influential on our careers and probably on the people who we turned out to be as well because he wasn’t just about football, he was about your personality and the type of person he wants you to be.

For me he was one of the best coaches ever, the way he used to do things, when you look at someone and he’s telling you to do something and you think, ‘this guy has won everything and he was one of the best in the team as well’. He wasn’t just a guy who was there or thereabouts, he was one of the main men who used to provide the goals every week and you knew how important he was. So he had the respect of every kid who walked in the Academy. But he was a tough guy as well and I think that people respected that more, that he demanded the best out of everyone and was great to work for.

I think the thing for me was that they both had different ideas – Houllier and Steve Heighway – and they didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and Houllier wanted a lot of power for players coming in. I think we saw that with the influx of young foreign players that were coming in. Suddenly we weren’t a club that progressed players, young players, we were a club that bought them in and wanted instant success out of them or we thought they were going to be the next big thing, Le Tallec, Pongolle… He bought a lot of players like that who he expected success with.

I think from my point of view, when those players were coming in you felt that because he’d bought them in, you were further down the line. I was coming back from three broken legs so I knew I’d have to go out on loan at some point but I always felt that when I came back, there were players in front of me that weren’t better than me but because they’d been bought in for a fee, they had to play.[/article]

 

[Wiberg]

Probably one of the best wingers we ever had as well. Great news.

 

[Dreambeliever]

Hard to complain about this move. Hopefully it will see some youth come through and make an impact.