This is long but very worth a read. It talks about our current young players, as well as players we have brought through in the past. It compares our youngsters to players who they are stylistically similar to and discusses what age those players broke into the first teams at top level. It loosely compares: Morgan to Villa Sterling to Giggs Suso to Beckham and Scholes But does not say they are the next ............ (he is not calling Morgan the next Villa). Any way, give it a read. It really promotes why we need to be patient with young players. http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/tomkins-the-promise-of-youth
Nice sensible read without really saying much. Also I thought tompkins had fallen out with the our website.
Definitely going to be an interesting couple of years where the youth are concerned. I think this echos many of our feelings about the youth and the dilemna of either bringing them in too early or not giving them the first team experience they need to develop their game. This is another reason that I hope we have a decent UEFA run (and League Cup) so that we have more games to help build up the younger players and give BR competitive games where he can assess their readiness.
It is interesting that he feels Suso may not break through till he is 20. What age did Iniesta get going at? Its hard to tell his age with the Rooney hair line.
I think we're definately crying out for a player like Suso in our starting line up - but I'm not sure if he is the one to play that role just yet.
It's not just a matter of patience, it is also a test of our management skills. I would not be surprised to see a number of short-term loan deals arranged for some or maybe all of them during the season - as we did last season with Jonjo.
I've been saying this all along. Unless it is a player in the wide positions or up front, then youngsters are unlikely to get the opportunity until a little older and less of a risk. The only way the other players will get game time is if they come off the bench when we are three or four goals up so, at the most, they get twenty minutes? It's not enough but no manager of a ambitious club is going to take the risk.
Excellent It will only be snippets of his work though, he will be an advertisement for The Tomkins Times too to help get more people paying.
Difficult to compare to any player that came through Barca youth (Iniesta) as they play for the B team in competitive action until they are 20+ then move up into the first team. Players are happy to do that most the time where as here to get them competitive action we'd have to keep loaning them out for 2 or 3 years and by then their contract will probably be up and they'll move on elsewhere.
1. i do not like tomkins, i think badly of him over a number of things. 2. this is simply a fluff piece to get back into the swing of being a propagandists for the club again. 3. clearly his 3/99 subscription didn't pay the bills so he's doing this to drum up business.... fair enough but the club is only bringing him in to big up certain things. 4. At least he admits in this in his opening lines that he got a lot wrong 5. a far far better article would have been to lambast the "loan" system as clearly there is no loan system and to show how a b team would benefit us and England down the road than having 92 independent clubs 6. he just piled on expectations on some kids as he's the guy on the club website saying what not one single coach would actually want said about their charges... we internet warriors could easily identify each and every kid (and more) then highlighted in his article. The club needs to take care of this. As i said i don't like him, i think its fluff to soothe the masses and it'll developed into made up stats that mean nothing justifying fsg and rodgers all year long.... tomkins was totally pro rafa and on hodgsons back form day one.pity he didn't just get out from under G&H far sooner and make that his play but by the time rafa left (his inside track) it was way too late to jump the G&H bandwagon though he tried.
