- Jul 29, 2004
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Perhaps I'm being a bit too critical about this but a lot of that is down to the fact I hear how others are frustrated by it so I know it's becoming an issue. When you have youth team coaches and youth players agents saying it there is clearly a problem somewhere. Whether people on here think it's justified or not, it is a thing. I just don't want to see all the brilliant work FP and his team have put into completely revolutionising the youth system go to shit and back to where it was. It's took a lot of blood, sweat, tears and schmoozing to get this academy back to being competitive and it'd be a real shame if it went back to how it was previous.That's true mate but Klopp didn't really give youth a chance at first.
Only Ojo got significant minutes but only 1 start in Klopp's first season. Randall got a little bit too but pretty much all thise minutes came in the cup, especially to start with.
Klopp started to integrate TAA the following season and gave Woodburn some minutes but again nothing to significant.
Randall and Ojo hardly got any minutes at all and were cast aside.
Kevin Stewart got more but he was 23 by this point.
This was all while they still had players out there like Lucas, Can, Moreno, Klavan, Grujic in the squad - players Klopp binned off soon after.
TAA became established the following season but the other younger players were even given no opportunites or let go.
Pep gave a couple of games to Tosin and a few to others but they were all Spanish kids (Diaz, Garcia, Maffeo) - all sold on.
Foden and Nmecha got chances the season after and only Foden got more after this. But still had to wait to become more established.
Pep didn;t give any other young players minutes the following season.
Therefore, I don't think you can really hold them up as examples. Both of them focused on getting to full strength before really trusting them. They have been there for 8 and 7 years, respectively and I don;t believe they have given enough youth chance.
I think we can only criticise Ange about this once he has been here a while, has stronger depth in key areas, and had more cup fixtures to give them those minutes.
So if I have an agenda that is it.
That however is nothing to do with my issue of how we defend at times and is a separate issue entirely.
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