Pep Lijnders insists Liverpool will continue to look from within for their future stars as he gave a glowing recommendation of the club’s Academy setup. Lijnders detailed a chat with Liverpool’s Academy director Alex Inglethorpe this week and suggested he and Jurgen Klopp will continue to search the youth ranks before they look to the transfer market.
Pep Ljinders said: “Harvey will not be in the squad. I think our medical department would put us against the wall if we did that – despite his performance in training yesterday! This is just my personal opinion, but I think a coach should be judged much more on the young players he brings through. I really believe in our project looking at our Academy. For example, I spent yesterday morning at the Academy to speak with the coaches and Alex Inglethorpe. We try to sign players but look at the Brentford game, one of our best players was Curtis Jones, but he was never a signing. It took us a really long time to influence him and develop him to commit to him and to give him another chance and in the end, we have a really good player.”
Lijnders, who was filling in for Klopp at the pre-match press conference for the Arsenal game,
Pep Ljinders added: “We have a lot of signings like this. We look all the time at the Academy. [On Tuesday] our U18s played against Burnley in the FA Youth Cup, we had Bobby Clark, Luke Chambers, Stefan Bajcetic, they all stand out. I hope they come with us during the pre-season because it is important for them to have a proper pre-season to know exactly how we want to do things. At this moment we have Kaide Gordon with us who has a goal in him, who has this outside creation in one-on-one situations and combination play. We always look at our Academy because we think a lot of our icons came from there and a lot of the best players in the history of Liverpool Football Club came from there and we have proven that. So I think a coach should be judged a lot more on this to be honest.”
