See what you're saying but Ajax get stripped of their first team players anyway (more space for youngsters) and are in a comparatively weak league. If we hadn't needed Flanagan and Robinson for the first team squad then they'd have been playing tonight so think it's a moot point. Also the sheer number of youth players you have to filter out just to get to the level of someone like Stuart Downing is huge, we could be trying for 4/5 seasons before we had someone even approaching his (normal) level and we don't have that kind of time. We're already blooding young players, i'm not sure throwing a 17 year old the size of a pea into the team is necessary at all, this article was a knee-jerk reaction to the Sunderland game.
I know what you mean about the knee-jerk reaction SN but all im saying is that when our supporters say 'hendo is one for the future' maybe we should promote from youth and buy 'for the now' with players of a few years experience at the top level. I just feel when most of our decent youth players get to old for their team they either dont get full contracts with us or are farmed out on loan.
HANG ON!!!! 1. guys i think the rose tinted glasses need to come off here. this is not a case of a kid being blocked by a manager nor is it a case that we've the next messi here chomping at the bit. Sterling is good, no question but he's not got much expereince and runs down blind alleys and misses an awful lot of chances... I think his posotional play at times is brillinat but then he lets himself down on the finish or poor decision making. If he wwere banging in the goals all the time and making sides look ridiculous fine but he's not actually doing that. 2. Again just tell me what you expect to happen if he started v qpr... i'd love to know cos i am fairly confident he'd not be walking off after 90mins with amotm award or having the media abuzzing about a new england star in the making. I think he'd drift out of the game becuase the step up would be huge. Owen at 17 was brought on for 20mins v wimbledon (and scored) on the last day of the season and by the following year was i nthe england team going to the 1998 world cup..... starting shelvey would be too much, i can see a case if he were doing as well as i would want him to that he'd be on the bench. 3. there is ZERO point in comparing us to ajax. Ajax play in a very uncompetitive league where they can afford to start players like those boys from the next gen in certain games and not risk anything... further they are a selling club and have room in their squad for more progression. We watched ajax v utd, they had only one guy i'd call prem standard on show and the rest were decent yonug guys but not at the standard. We are lfc and while i thnk sterling should be able to easily displace maxi for example he's got to then force his way in past other players who are on far bigger wages.... thats not to say if he could deliver he should be in but i just don't see it in the prem. 4. sterling is barely 17, just signed pro forms etc... if we promoted every guy at that age to the firsts we'd be relegated. once the boy signed his contract, and shows some developemnt then i think he will be stright into the first. I'd not be at all suprised to see him sometime in late april/may if we are in the fa cup semis/final being in a match day squad for the league. so if you are rapidly now hammering a keyboard to defend our youths, or sterling don't bother... lose the orse tinted glasses and see that no manager holds back a talent but just cos fans say a kid is ready doesn't make it so.
