What is better, bags of money or a youth team brought up through the ranks together playing as a complete unit. Could the Chelsea team of last year have beaten the Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, and Neville Neville`s 2 sons Gary and Phil when they were at their best?
With all the fanfare over the Liverpool takeover Rafa Benitiz`s January transfers and especially his emphasis on youth has been overlooked by nearly all, but they could prove to be as important as the takeover itself.
I remember reading Alan Hansens biography years ago, in one story he told how he and Kenny Dalglish watched an evening game of football and arrived back at King Kenny`s house at about 1 o clock in the morning, but instead of going to bed Dalglish searched frantically through his hundreds of channels until he found a live game of football to watch, it was only a non-event south American game, but to Dalglish it was like a drug fix. Hansen then decided that he could not devote so much of his life to football management so instead decided to go for the easier path, the football pundit.
This brings us back to Rafa Benitez, i believe that all managers lead somewhat similar lives to Dalglish to a certain degree. In the explosion that is today's global media it is possible for Rafa and his fellow managers to monitor football at nearly all levels globally. So they see young players and if they see some talents that impress them they can monitor the progress of that player from an early age up until there is a possibility of giving a trial or making a move for the player before he hits the headlines and becomes less of a bargain.
I believe that all good managers monitor young players in some way like this before sending in their scouts to have a second opinion.
Managers knowledge of these young players is like a personal wealth, they can spend a little when they move to a new club, but also save a little by not introducing the younger players till they know that they will be staying at that club for a long period.
Rafa has strengthened the main squad from day one but has also been even more active in the Liverpool youth set-up showing that when he signed on for the Anfield job he was in it for the long haul.
Paul Anderson, Gabriel Paletta, Miki Roque, Nabil El Zhar, Besian Idrizaj, Godwin Antwi and Jack Hobbs have all bee previously added to the youth set-up.
But this January transfer window Rafa has gone all out to show how important he see`s the role of youngsters trying to make the breakthrough into the first team and create competition.
This last transfer window he bought 6 players, Alvaro Arbeloa, Daniele Padelli, Jordy Brouwer, Emiliano Insua, Francisco Manuel Duran and Ronald Huth most of whom are teenagers.
He also got Astrit Ajdarevic a 16 year old swede who has impressed so much that the Academy has broken from the norm by singling out the young striker out for special praise.
But the fact that Rafa has had to bring in so many young guns illustrates how badly the Liverpool Academy is failing, any football institution that did not see Wayne Rooney`s potential and rejected him in a trial should be questioned, and like Rafa and Houlier before him, both have found themselves at loggerheads with Steve Heighway the academy director , so its probably a good thing that Heighway will be stepping aside in May so that Rafa can bring in his own men and give his own young imports and the new generation of trainees a better chance of making the breakthrough to the big time.
Rafa has had experience in the Real Madrid youth teams, so i would hope that the new Liverpool board would give him more of a say in the running of the academy after the departure of Heighway. After all the young players are aspiring to play in Rafa`s team so why not let Rafa have a hand in teaching them his ways at an early age.
Benitez has shown his intentions already to build a youth team for the future and i think even with the expected windfall from our American owners i still expect and hope that we will be building our youth team, but now maybe we will be able to compete with Arsenal for the bigger money young guns.
I have faith in Benitez`s decisions so i think we will see some of his youth imports playing alongside Gerrard and the new stars the new money will bring in.
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