Grow Your Own Crops
Liverpool are poaching 15-year-old Rio Ngumoha from Chelsea in their latest attempt to strengthen their talent factory.
Nobody likes going to the supermarket. Spending over an hour stocking up on groceries for the week ahead tends to make for a miserable time. The shops are always heaving with customers, and you know that vanilla yoghurt you really like? Yeah, well the guy in front of you has just bought the last one.
We’ve all experienced the hectic nature of Tesco or Walmart on a weekend. It is nuts. Well, now imagine what buying your groceries would be like if everybody had a three-month period in which they had to do one big annual shop. For the rest of the year, Tesco is closed.
You’ve just imagined the summer transfer market. Everybody only has a few months to purchase what they need. Everybody is panicking. Everybody wants that same vanilla yoghurt, and that forces some people into buying cheaper alternatives from Aldi and Lidl.
Some people have more money to splash than others. Some people just don’t know what they want. And some people tend to go a bit crazy with their spending. Like, did you really need that many tubes of toothpaste? You don’t even own a toothbrush.
Liverpool tend to arrive at Walmart with a plan every summer. The modern Reds — most of the time, at least — already know what they want to pick up from the shelves before they actually arrive.
Nevertheless, they are tired of relying on the supermarket. The place is just too busy. So how do you feed your needs without buying frozen food and fighting for the last cut of steak every week? You grow your own crops, of course.
This week, news emerged suggesting that Liverpool are on the verge of poaching Rio Ngumoha from Chelsea. The 15-year-old wonderkid is rumoured to be excellent, and he’s regarded as one of the best English players on the circuit.
Now isn’t the time to delve into his game, but the nature of the deal is interesting. The Reds are getting better at this sort of thing. Liverpool are learning how to grow their own crops, realising the perks those players can potentially deliver further down the line.
In 2016, the UK voted for Brexit. I’m not going to get into politics, but things have been a bit messy since, and that is probably an understatement. It feels like nothing has changed apart from the landscape becoming a lot harder to navigate.
Brexit was always going to have some kind of impact on football, especially considering how often players tend to move from clubs in Europe to clubs in England. Signing young gems from obscure locations was surely going to become more complex for Premier League clubs due to the UK complicating things with their borders.
On the back of Brexit, Liverpool have grown more interested in gaining an edge when it comes to hoovering up the best homegrown prospects. Indeed, not long ago, the Reds were recruiting for a new data scientist whose role would entirely revolve around the academy and scouting for diamonds in the Premier League 2.
Liverpool are obsessed with putting a number on what players do, but using the data to scout teenagers is far from simple. It is a minefield for a whole host of reasons. The bottom line is that youth players are still developing in every sense of the word. You can’t be certain about anything.
Nevertheless, this was Liverpool at least making an attempt to dedicate more of their focus to signing the best kids in the country. Since then, 16-year-old Alvin Ayman has agreed to join from Wolves, and Trey Nyoni and Amara Nello both arrived from Leicester City and West Ham respectively last year.
Ngumoha is the latest — and arguably most exciting — name to add to the list, with Liverpool also making tracks internally over the past few seasons. Who could forget what happened when the Reds faced Chelsea in the final of the Carabao Cup last term?
Bobby Clark, Jayden Danns, James McConnell and Jarell Quansah all featured in the high-profile bout, with the latter now viewed as indispensable to such an extent that Newcastle United are asking to swap him for Anthony Gordon, and Richard Hughes is laughing as he puts the phone down.
Conor Bradley has also emerged on the scene over the past six months or so, having shined on loan for Bolton Wanderers beforehand. People are debating about Trent Alexander-Arnold becoming a full-time midfielder, and much of that talk stems from the new right-back on the block within Liverpool’s ranks.
If Quansah and Bradley both got sold this summer, how much would they raise as a duo? I don’t think £100m is as unrealistic as it sounds, which is pretty insane considering most supporters hadn’t even heard of either of them as recently as 12 months ago.
They are both really valuable. And it’s worth noting that if they did depart, they would be regarded as ‘pure profit’ in today’s game. I’m not a fan of that term, but selling academy players apparently makes your books look a little healthier. Just ask Chelsea.
Liverpool might find that out for themselves in the coming weeks, with Tyler Morton linked with a £20m-move to RB Leipzig after impressing on loan at Hull City last season. He’s very good, the Red Bull outfit should do it.
Sepp van den Berg is another player in the spotlight right now. He’s linked with a permanent switch away from Anfield, but his evolution over the past year has been so impressive that Liverpool want to assess him during pre-season before making a decision on his future.
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