Much has been made about our youth system during our time under Rafa Benitez. Steve Heighway left a few years ago, apparently due to not enough of our young stars making it into the Spaniards first-team. It has to be said, with Rafael in control we’ve seen more of the young talent on show in first-team games and Arsenal tonight is another chance for them to show their cards.
There’s no official news on the team yet, but many rumours have been thrown around that the side put out in London tonight will be a mixture of reserve and youth players. Personally I hope there’s a lot more of the later, I’d much rather see future prospects like Daniel Pacheco and David N’gog than less than impressive fringe players like Ryan Babel and Andriy Voronin.
Martin Kelly proved against Lyon that it only takes one great game to get yourself in the news among Liverpool’s faithful and given the chance I’m sure many more of our youth players will give it all to make a name for themselves against the Gooners in the League Cup tonight. Personally I’d like to see a lot more of Daniel Pacheco, who’s had a number of great performances for the reserve team bagging enough goals to make him a serious contender to make it onto the bench for our first-team on a regular basis.
Whilst I don’t agree with playing the youngsters in make or break games in the League or in Europe the League Cup offers a great proving ground for young talent, especially considering the trophy isn’t top of our list for what we want to add to the cabinet at the end of the season. If we’re being honest the League Cup really isn’t important to most Reds, whilst we’d like to win it we really won’t be too bothered if we’re knocked out, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. So for that reason the young kids should be given a chance.
It’s time to prove that our young lads have the potential to make it big, we’ve won Youth Cup after Youth Cup in recent years and it’s time for the players who brought that silverware to the club to make the step up and try and bring some more to the first team.
M. Owen
michael@empireofthekop.com