Following Raheem Sterling’s example Andre Wisdom has now signed a new long term Liverpool contract. Although far from being the finished article Wisdom has been impressive when he has featured for the first team. I’ve long argued that spending £5 million on a squad player to start a dozen games a season is pointless, use your younger players and hopefully one of them will shine.
Our squad contains a decent number of young British players and this bodes well for the future. So far this season we’ve had contributions from Sturridge, Sterling, Shelvey, Henderson, Allen, Wisdom, Kelly and Robinson – eight British players aged 23 or under who could form the nucleus of our team over the next decade, with the likes of Conor Coady and Adam Morgan just behind them and Thomas Ince and Jack Butland rumoured possible signings to add to the group.
I’ve paid attention over the last few years as Spurs signed Paul Robinson, Aaron Lennon, Jermaine Defoe, Tom Huddlestone, Michael Dawson, Garteh Bale and Kyle Walker and thought they were going about things the right way. Young, British players who have grown up watching the Premier League every week and understand the passion of English football can be invaluable (well, often over priced anyway) and in my opinion give a clear indication of the direction in which a club is heading.
Not all the signings will work out, the never do, but some will and hopefully our future will be bright and full of players our fans can identify with, players who know what it means to wear our shirt. Spurs are such a good example to follow, they brought in young players and struggled, remember them being bottom of the league when they beat us early in Redknapp’s reign? But these young players laid good solid foundations, gained experience and the team has been challenging in the top five for the past few seasons now.
Winning the Premier League has become harder and harder and without a silly amount of money coming in (it’s nearly ten years since anybody who isn’t Man Utd or has a sugar daddy came top) it’s certainly not something that will happen for any club short term. Hopefully our base of home grown talent can take us back to the higher league positions over the next few seasons and from there we can push on and get back to a point where we’re genuine title contenders. It’ll take time but showing faith in our youngsters is realistically our best shot, and seeing our club doing this is a great cause for optimism.
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