Reds Quintet Star For England Under 21's

 For the second time in the space of five days Liverpool had five players in action for an impressive England under 21's side who continue to record good victories. Jonjo Shelvey, Jack Robinson, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Andre Wisdom have all played big parts for their country this week which bodes well for Liverpool.

 I've written several posts over the course of this season about the promise of our youthful squad and the thinking behind our policy of recruiting young, mainly British talent so I'm not going to go over what I've already written, but it's always good to see anything positive relating to Liverpool. At times during the recent under 21 internationals we've seen five Reds on the pitch all at once, which gives our players good experience of playing together in decent, competitive matches and will aid their development as a squad.

 Of the five lads we've got in the under 21 squad three of them have been bought for a fee by Liverpool, and in Henderson's case a sizeable fee, so it shows how hard our scouts are working to find good young talent. Sterling and Shelvey were both bought for fees that if we'd waited a couple of years would have risen considerably, adding more pressure to the youngsters the way it did to Henderson. I thought that at times last season Henderson showed potential but when you've paid the millions we did you don't want potential, you want instant results. Shelvey and Sterling have had the opportunity to gradually gain first team experience with lesser expectation due to the fact we didn't invest such a large amount of cash in either of them.

 Loan spells have helped players like David Beckham early in their careers and I don't think it's a bad idea, there are four or five players (Coates, Shelvey, Robinson, Yesil and maybe Wisdom) on the fringes of our first team squad who would benefit from a season of regular football at a decent level, ideally Premier League, if not Championship, and it's my opinion we should look at this for next season. Whether the squad is big enough to cope with losing almost half a dozen players for a year is debatable, but if we don't get European football next term, and it looks like we won't, we could probably manage.

 I'm not a big England fan but with so many of our players in the under 21 side I'm paying a bit more attention, anything that points to a good future for Liverpool is worth taking note of. We obviously need to add a little experience to the potential within our squad but the signs are that the young players we have are the right ones. The future at Liverpool is looking more promising than it has done for a while, let's enjoy it.