When The Cover Ducks - Does The Liverpool Squad Need More Balance?

 I’ve been saying for years that I don’t see the logic in signing squad players in their late twenties or early thirties, if somebody is going to make ten to fifteen appearances it makes more sense both financially and from a player development point of view to give younger players a chance.

 I’ve somewhat changed my mind on this issue.

 I’m not against signing younger players, the complete opposite in fact (there will be a post on here later this week or early next week about why it is vital for us to do this), I just think youth alone won’t work, you need experience alongside them. You can put a group of kids in a classroom with all the equipment and text books in the world but if there’s no teacher they won’t learn as quickly.

 Fixtures like the one at Oldham yesterday give the manager the opportunity to rotate his squad, to keep a few of his big guns on the sidelines ready for the bigger battles that lie ahead this week. Picking a young player who may only rate a 4, 5 or 6 out of 10 is a good thing, if you feel playing him now will aid his development and he will grow to become a dependable regular 8 or 9 out of 10 man. Picking six or seven of these younger players in one staring XI is dangerous and it can backfire spectacularly, like it did yesterday. Robinson, Coates, Wisdom, Sterling, Henderson, Allen and Borini may have potential (some more than others) but not one of them is a guaranteed 7 or more out of 10 man yet. That gave us the very real possibility yesterday that the majority of our team would underperform, and it happened. And we know the rest.

 Last season we had players like Dirk Kuyt, Craig Bellamy and Maxi Rodrigez on our books, men who you could be sure would be solid even if they weren’t spectacular. I know that letting these go has reduced our wage bill but it has now also reduced our income, as getting knocked out of both domestic cups so early will affect our gate receipts and prize money. Looking at our current crop Jamie Carragher should have played yesterday, no debate about it really.

 It’s far easier to say we should sign a couple of experienced senior pros for small fees who can come in and do a job for us a dozen times a season than it is to actually do it. But it needs to be done. At present we have Carragher (at the very back end of his career), Gerrard (needs a rest every now and then), Johnson (can be injury prone), Reina (possibly looking for a move away) and Downing (far from a consistent performer for us) who fall into the senior professionals category, with Skrtel, Lucas, Agger and Suarez behind them but when you look around at the top clubs throughout Europe they seem to have more of this type of player than we do. When the battle heats up there’s nobody you’d rather have alongside you than someone who’s been through the fight before.

 I don’t want this to come across as an anti-young players piece, as it isn’t. They are the future of our club and we currently can’t afford to buy the top established superstars so we have to develop our own. I’d just like to see a more balanced squad at Liverpool and I think that’s not an unreasonable thing to want.