Why It Will Take Longer For Young Future Superstars To Fully Thrive

The route to the top is harder now

In Ian Graham’s new book, “How To Win The Premier League” he takes (and acknowledges) my ‘Tomkins’ Law’ on transfers, and explains the logic as to why, as I calculated, roughly half of transfers failing were valid.

My method involved assessing 3,000 Premier League transfers (circa 2011), and finding a simple way to judge value for money (purchase price adjusted for football inflation, sale fee, if applicable, adjusted for football inflation) and output (games played).

I found that between 40% and 60% of transfers failed (the more expensive the better the odds of success, up to the point when the very most expensive saw a drop back, to around 50%, which may be due to extra price-tag pressure).

Graham explains that even if there’s a 90% chance of a transfer succeeding in each of the main variables, that ends up at just 53%.

His six reasons were:

• The player isn’t as good as you thought

• The player doesn’t fit your style

• The player is played out of position

• The manager doesn’t like the player

• The player has injury and/or personal issues

• There's a better player already on the roster

But what about applying all this thinking to youth players? (If someone hasn’t already done it?)

So I thought I’d take a fairly deep dive.

We know that only a tiny percentage of kids make it play first team football.

From “i” in 2022:

“Ninety-seven per cent of the former elite academy players now aged 21 to 26 years old failed to make a single Premier League appearance, official statistics reveal.

Figures obtained by i from the Premier League’s own collection of data uncover the stark reality for Premier League hopefuls who join clubs aged as young as eight years old and can, in some cases, spend more than a decade dedicating their life to a team before being released.

The analysis — of players born from 1 September 1995 to 31 August 2000 — includes 4,109 players who were registered at Category One academies. Category One status is awarded to the top-tier academies that represent almost the entirety of the Premier League — including the Big Six of Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United — and several clubs in the Championship.

Of the 4,109 former academy footballers, 70 per cent were not even handed a professional contract at a Premier League or English Football League club. And only one in 10 has gone on to make more than 20 league appearances in the top four tiers of English football.”

Many of the same issues Graham lists applies to homegrown players, too.

I think it’s even worse for the wunderkinds.

What they tend not to have to face is the disruption of a transfer (and can be bedded into a first team in gradual stages).

But they still have to face:

• likely change of manager;

• possible change of role;

• loss of confidence;

• world-class player/s ahead of them;

• unable to cope with physical side of men’s football (no teenager is at the peak of their physical attributes);

• don’t develop physically in line with peers

• overwhelmed by spotlight, and/or can’t live up to hype;

• lose focus, thinking they’ve done the hard part (they haven’t), and that it gets easier;

• disenfranchisement, if the reality doesn’t match the dream;

• lose focus due to people around them;

• and most of all, injury.

The last is especially interesting to me right now, as the more ferociously fast and physical the Premier League gets, the greater the step up from the far tamer academy life. To me, it seems that while there are more injuries overall, the risk for teens is higher.

Just to compete, you can try your hardest and still be at a disadvantage. You could be a striker and go from facing 5’10” centre-backs to facing Virgil van Dijk and William Saliba. Not only that, they’ve got Ibrahima Konaté and Gabriel alongside them. You may be quick for 18, but you ain’t outrunning Micky van de Ven.

(That said, the recently released top speeds in the Premier League make zero sense, with van de Ven above 37kph and no one else above 36kph, when that’s usually where a dozen or so players reside. All the Liverpool players’ top speeds are way down on last season, which again makes no sense, even if the club lacks express pace in the best XI. Some of the fastest players in the Premier League are given far slower scores.)

And being a successful footballer (and perhaps any team sport) requires feeling at home.

• At home at that level;

• At home at the club;

• At home in your role;

• At home in the area;

Each of these can take a while to achieve, which is the key; and of course, can then be unsettled in various ways.

While I’m no doctor (and as such wasn’t qualified to remove my own appendix last week, but did so, just out of curiosity, and replaced it with a bison’s gall bladder), it strikes me that the more intense the top level is, the harder teenagers have to work just to get a shot at it.

But the teenage body is still growing. I got to speak to a spinal surgeon about this last year, having likely had an undiagnosed stress fracture of the back since my teens (in part due to a congenitally undersized L5 vertebra). It’s now something I look out for.

Stress fractures are everywhere with younger players, and workload is surely the issue; the damage builds up over time.

The surgeon told me that it really affects teens, and is made worse by twisting and turning motions.

Fast bowlers in cricket, whose side-motion loading is incredibly unnatural in terms of daily life and the repeated strain on one side of the body, are almost all out for some time with what’s technically called spondylolysis: “a crack in the pars interarticularis, a thin bone segment that connects two vertebrae in the lower back”. (I had it on both sides, and spent six months having physio to strengthen my lower back; but if they’re old fractures they won’t now heal.)

But if you don’t work super-hard as a kid, how do you make it? It’s catch-22.

Barcelona have spent the last five years fielding 16/17-year-olds. But even in the less-intense La Liga, they’re almost all suffering really serious injuries.

Once established, you do at least have a chance; you’ve made your name, and got the good contract. Without that, you just get lost.

(The surgeon who repaired Darwin Núñez’s ACL at 17 said almost every player that age with that injury didn’t then make it. Núñez was an outlier.)

You won’t just be released if you’re a name, on a proper pro contract.

But miss 12, 18 or 24 months in your late teens, and while your body should then grow stronger through the process of becoming a man (you can fill out, gain muscle and you may still get taller), you’ve lost vital development and ‘proving’ time.

At Liverpool we’ve seen Rhian Brewster miss 18 months with various issues, and go from hotshot to potshot. Promising centre-forwards Layton Stewart, Paul Glatzel and others have suffered cruciate (ACL) injuries at 18.

(The ACL seems quite innocent as an acronym, but it is essentially what holds your lower leg to your upper leg. Now you just have to say ‘ACL’ and you know it means one has snapped.)

Kaide Gordon had had all manner of growth-related injuries, and from being elite at 15, 16 and 17, is now on loan at Norwich, recently scoring his first ever league goal as he turned 20 (having scored in the FA Cup for the Reds in 2021/22). To even be playing in the Championship is an achievement, after all he’s been through.

Then you get someone like Harvey Elliott having his ankle broken a few years ago by a good old-fashioned bad tackle. Elliott’s robustness before his foot fracture has been most impressive, and maybe as he’s not that fast, he doesn’t get as many muscle injuries; and he also hasn’t played a ton of minutes since his 2,753 for Blackburn aged 17, on loan; since when he’s usually played around half that number for Liverpool, and looked better each year, without being overplayed.

I was recently reading an interview with Chris Kirkland, who was known for being horrifically injury-prone, but initially it was broken bones and freak accidents; before the back issues started (and he got addicted to pain killers).

I was at Coventry when Kirkland, then 19 or 20, was outstanding in denying Michael Owen time and time again, circa 2000 or 2001.

The best young keeper I ever saw at Liverpool, maybe just ahead of Caoimhín Kelleher and Péter Gulácsi (whom I once watched train at Melwood in 2009 while waiting to have lunch with Rafa Benítez), was Kamil Grabara; yet in 2020 Grabara spent days in hospital after a truly horrific head injury while out on loan.

That set him back massively, albeit he went and rebuilt his career at Copenhagen, and is now at Wolfsburg, and has played for Poland. Kelleher has developed very nicely, and outperformed Alisson last season on advanced save metrics; he’ll need to do the same again for the next 1-2 months.

But I’d think stress fractures are a big issue in general, and ACLs seem to occur a lot with kids whose ACLs may not be as hardy as when the body has finished growing, in the early 20s. (In researching this piece I spoke to Dr. Leo Spaceman, and also D. Howser, MD.)

The best teenage midfielder I’ve seen at Liverpool since Steven Gerrard is Stefan Bajcetic, and he broke through to the first team at 17, ahead of Gerrard’s timeline; but then missed a year or more.

Gerrard himself had various injuries, until his early 20s, and before him, Michael Owen essentially lost a hamstring.

More recently, at Barcelona, Ansu Fati, given his debut at 16 years and 304 days, was the “next Messi”.

(Wikipedia: “On 17 September, Fati made his Champions League debut in a 0–0 away draw against Borussia Dortmund, becoming the youngest player to feature for Barcelona in the competition at the age of 16 years and 321 days, breaking the previous record held by Bojan Krkić” ... which brings Krkić into the equation too.)

Since when, a series of injuries have left Fati looking more like the next Freddy Adu. He’s still only 21, but about to turn 22. He’s played 24 minutes this season.

Pedri, aged 17/18, played a frankly insane 73 club and country games in 2020/21, as if no one thought that he might need careful handling. He got badly injured and played just 12 league games the next season.

Gavi, at 16-18, played 34 and then 36 league games in his first two teenage seasons, then – again – 12 the next, because of an ACL aged 19, from which I don’t think he’s yet fully returned.

At Real Madrid, there was talk of future superstar Joan Martínez. Then this summer, an ACL: “The 17-year-old centre-back sustained the injury during a training session with Real Madrid’s first team, with whom he had travelled on the club’s pre-season tour of the United States.”

As Gerrard showed, you can overcome all manner of injuries earlier in your career; and even Ryan Giggs later left behind the frequent hamstring strains.

But Owen’s hamstrings were damaged beyond repair; and that’s a thing with injuries. Some heal properly, but the big problem are those that don’t.

They can reduce pace or spring or turning ability, and may lead to knock-on injuries, which also seem common when returning from a long layoff.

Owen could still run, just not as fast. And for Owen, being that quick was a big part of his skillset. No one wanted a slow Michael Owen. Daniel Sturridge seemed to follow the same trajectory.

Injuries can do the same later in life, of course; it’s not just teenagers.

il Fenômeno

The original Ronaldo, and still the best, is worth revisiting via the Netflix documentary, which I caught a couple of winters ago.

I’d forgotten just how good he was. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen acceleration (with the ball) like it before or since.

(And no, I don’t just mean running at the parting Man United midfield and defence.)

You have the more jinking, evasive, twinkled-toed geniuses of Messi and Maradona, with their low centres of gravity, but il Fenômeno had close control at what looked to be about 90mph.

Even in the 1990s, players got kicked out of games in a way that’s not allowed now (and why I still think Maradona, from the ‘80s, was the best player ever, albeit he didn’t have the longevity of his greatness, in part due to a terrible lifestyle – but he seemed like a proper genius).

But Original Ronaldo’s serious injury problems started at just 22, after several years of incredible achievements, and when he probably still wasn’t as what could have been his physical peak.

In 1999 his knee was badly injured and in 2000, a handful of minutes into his return, it went kaboom.

“Ronaldo’s physiotherapist Nilton Petrone stated, ‘his knee-cap actually exploded’, and called it ‘the worst football injury’ he's ever seen.”

He played a mere 13 league games in his last three years in Italy, aged 22-25 – three of the years that are probably the best for a super-quick striker.

He was still great afterwards, and won it all with Real Madrid and Brazil, but how much does it take out of a body (and mind, the tiredness of which then affects the body) to have done all that by age 22?

By age 21 he’d played about 150 games in four different leagues and over 50 games for Brazil.

He played an insane 20 games for Brazil in 1997, and 10 in 1998, when he famously had some kind of seizure on the day of the World Cup Final, and was wheeled out onto the pitch in ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ style. Somehow he came back in 2002, scored a ton of goals and Brazil won the World Cup, even if he wasn’t as fast as before, and the weight piled on.

Someone like Wayne Rooney came through at 16-18 with an adult body, but that weight worked against him, and he was as good as finished by 30.

Players who go on longest generally seem to be lean, but lean* players may not be strong enough earlier in their careers.

(* Some who spring to mind: Luka Modrić, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Cristiano Ronaldo, and closer to home, Ryan Giggs, Teddy Sheringham, Peter Crouch and Jamie Vardy; and James Milner and Gareth Barry were never bulky lads. But obviously they all lost pace, if they had any, over the years.)

I was encouraged when a skinny Conor Bradley went off and played nearly 60 games for Bolton, but as soon as he came back he had a spinal stress fracture.

Down the M62, Kobbie Mainoo was also due to start for Man United last season, but like Bradley got injured in preseason and didn’t return until nearly December.

The Reds’ quick and skilful young left-back Calum Scanlon, 19, went on loan to Millwall this summer, but their boss Neil Harris recently said: “He’s got a stress fracture in his back, which is a recurring injury for him,” and the player is now back at Liverpool until the 2025.

No Solutions?

It’s not really helpful to coddle youngsters and make it too easy. That won’t elevate them elite players.

Jonathan Northcroft just had an interesting article in The Sunday Times about the elite academies producing mostly ‘soft’, skilful players (I’d have fit right in as a kid!), and no tough defenders, goalkeepers or holding midfielders.

Ex Chelsea and Spurs star Gus Poyet told Northcroft:

“The problem is the academies. They are only teaching one way. They are not teaching suffering, competing, contact. And young players have changed with [respect to] leadership.”

While the point is correct, it’s still worth noting that the players who peak latest in football have always been pure defenders, goalkeepers and holding midfielders. It’s about experience; whereas pace and skill for an attacker can be enough as a kid, to at least get some game-time.

I recall Steve Heighway (I think) from the Liverpool Academy about 20 years ago saying you just can’t tell with young centre-backs. Since he said that, I’m not sure any have come through at the Big Six clubs and become proper stalwarts. A few have become handy squad players, but that’s mostly it.

Levi Colwill is the closest to being a regular, albeit he’s only just starting on that journey. Maybe now it’s different, as someone like Jarell Quansah (like Colwill) looked elite at 19 for the age-groups, but they are both part of a ‘footballing’ breed of centre-back; but a run of half a dozen or so games means Colwill hasn’t yet become a proper regular. Both are now 21.

And while he has a great pair of shoulders for his age, Quansah instantly lost his spot this season to the brute strength and power of Ibrahima Konaté, who is not a kid anymore, and now knows how to use his physique to better effect, and is fully Premier League adapted.

Quansah at 21 is maybe better than Konaté at 21, but Konaté at 25 is a different proposition.

At first, in 2021/22, Konaté won 64.2% of his aerial duels; about average for a centre-back, but below average for 6’4”.

Then he was hovering in the +70% range for two seasons, which is getting up near Virgil van Dijk territory.

Right now he’s at a whopping 86.2%, which is perhaps not sustainable, but also part of an upward trajectory. And that’s before you think about going into a 50-50 with him. (Check you’ve got insurance first.)

My old rule, for the past 20 or so years, has been that the Slow Giants peak latest, and while that referred to centre-backs, it applies to holding midfielders too. (Slower creative players also usually take more time; pace speeds things up, in all senses, and all game intelligence should improve with age and experience. Ditto Slow Giants who are centre-forwards.)

Sami Hyypia was a Slow Giant rejected by Oldham around the age of 21 or 22, then playing for Liverpool by his mid-20s. (Konaté is a mid-paced giant who has some speed once he gets going; he has long-stride pace, like a sprinter who may be slow out of the blocks.)

The data still surely says (unless it’s changed recently) that centre-backs and goalkeepers tend to average the oldest of all positions. Arsène Wenger always like an old defence, a medium-aged midfield and a young attack.

Holding midfield is essentially a centre-back of sorts these days, as they drop in there, and their job is often to destroy, and ‘give it simple’; unless you do it the joyous Ryan Gravenberch way, and even then, he turned 22 in the summer, and already has 230 club games.

And, indeed, he’s had to get a bit stronger and tougher. Aggression is something which young players often naturally lack when they come up against seasoned pros, who will just be gnarlier and more assertive, due to age and seniority.

Young players are often more quiet and respectful, until it’s their turn to boss it; unless they’re just a narky type from the get-go, like a Craig Bellamy.

(Rodri was far from a teenage sensation, and was released by Atletico Madrid aged 17 due to a “lack of physical strength”, but then re-signed aged 22, the same year that he made his Spain debut. It’s only since he passed his mid-20s that he’s been shortlisted for major awards, and even by the age of 24 had only 17 caps for Spain. Even his goals output has more than doubled for club and country in the past three years, as his physical power has increased.)

New to England having just turned 21, as Gravenberch was, you likely won’t be fully ready (and arriving from overseas after the season has started makes it harder). And if you somehow can handle the pace and intensity of the games, can you handle it for 10 months?

Dominik Szoboszlai, himself only 22 last summer, wowed by easily handling the first aspects of life in the English league, but then faded and got injured; albeit I also think he may have been overplayed at times, prior to his injury. While his final-third output this season hasn’t been great, his sprints and stamina, to be able to repeat sprint after sprint, has been remarkable, if you track his work-rate. He’ll also toughen up.

To be good in these types of roles – to be tough, gnarly players – maybe you need to go down to the lower leagues, or come up from the lower leagues; or just arrive at the top clubs later (and Northcroft’s article was more about a lack of spine/grit in the England team).

I showed back in 2016 that every inch of extra height between 5’9” and 6’5” meant improved aerial duel success rate (on all average), but it’s also clear that age plays a role too: young tall players may be lighter, and not as aggressive, nor as good at timing jumps or holding off/bumping away opponents in the air. (Konaté now can match timing, height, power and experience, as an example.)

All that said, it brings me onto another ‘failing’ youth starlet whose Liverpool career blossomed early, and has fallen away by the age of 23, but where he only originally got game-time due to an injury crisis.

Having totally forgotten about Rhys Williams when writing this, the Athletic now have a piece on him.

‘James O’Connor was part of that Kidderminster squad, before later becoming their assistant manager. He tells The Athletic: “When you sign a player from one of the top clubs, you want them to represent themselves right. You’ve got certain expectations. He was excellent. Rhys was polite, well-mannered and really threw himself into it.

“Don’t get me wrong, he was a beanpole, he hadn’t filled out at all, but he was a good footballer, great passer, technically gifted and he stood out on the ball at that level especially.

“He broke his nose early on — boot to the face. He was in a struggling team where the manager changed three or four times, so he had to deal with all of that. The players really respected him because he stuck at it. He gave it a good go and that’s what you need to have a good career. You need to adapt when you’re out of your comfort zone.”’

Williams said of his failed loan at Aberdeen last season, “I had trapped nerves in my back. My body was still growing and that was causing me some issues.”

It sums up everything I’ve been talking about: a Slow Giant who lacked pace, and was “a beanpole” who “hadn’t filled out at all”; and who suffered injuries, including to his back.

But back in the 2021 run-in, Williams did really well, despite clearly being fairly slow (a big issue), as he was indeed good on the ball, and very tall.

At 6’5 but aged 19/20 he still won a staggering 90% of his aerial duels that season (75% is elite), mainly doing the ‘high’ stuff while Nat Phillips, 6’3”, older stronger and insanely aggressive in the air, dealt with the more combative duels. (Similar to Joël Matip and Virgil van Dijk.) It was only for a shortish run of games, but Williams did a job.

But Williams has had various injuries ever since, including those back problems. He’s had some terrible loans, but unlike Quansah, as a comparison, he was not as quick, not as strong and not as balanced. He’s now on loan at 4th-tier Morecambe, but finally getting games. Quansah played far more age-group games for England.

Then, Calvin Ramsay arrived from Aberdeen a couple of years ago, having just played 33 games for the Scottish club aged 19 in his breakthrough season, and a familiar story arose. Before long he was having an operation, which Jürgen Klopp spoke about at the time:

“ … obviously missing the rest of the season is serious, but with Calvin it’s really special. So, Calvin arrived here and had a back problem I never heard [about] before. It’s just that when you are in the growing process it can happen but he played all the games and didn’t really feel anything.

“Then he came here and we make a proper check and it’s like, ‘OK, needs something, we need to have a closer look.’

“So, he had no real pain or whatever but was not allowed to train for a long period because otherwise you can, for a young person who is still growing, you can create real problems in the long term. So, it was no chance.”

Ramsay recently spoke of a conversation with Klopp, before the latter stood down and the former went off to Wigan on loan:

“Jürgen knew what it was like for a young player to go through injuries, and he pulled me into his office one day," he explained.

“He told me Liverpool weren’t going anywhere, and reminded me that I had a long-term contract.

“He told me to get myself right and when I was, Liverpool would still be there for me. That was so good to hear – and something I really needed to hear.

“It was reassuring and gave me that bit of confidence back. I knew that if I just did what I had to do in the next period of my career I’d be back showing him what I could do.

“Obviously Jürgen has left Liverpool and the new gaffer [Arne Slot] has come in. So I have to start again. So far I haven’t been able to show him what I’ve got yet as I’m out on loan.

“But there will be a time when I’m back at Liverpool working under him and showing what I can do on the pitch.

“I have a burning desire to get back to where I was when I signed for Liverpool and show people what I can do. A couple of managers haven’t given me game time, so I want to prove why I should have been playing in their team.

“Any player wants to prove people wrong and show why you got that big move to a huge club. That’s what I have to do now.”

A player’s luck can change, and suddenly they can fulfil their potential. Or, they may be cut adrift.

We always say “throw the kids in, we’ve nothing to lose” but it may be that we lose them, and their careers.

Loans can ‘make’ young players, especially if there’s a top-class player ahead of them at their parent club, and they won’t get game-time otherwise; for Trent Alexander-Arnold, he faced an injured Nathaniel Clyne, so it was more straightforward. He didn’t need a loan. Even a non-injured Nathaniel Clyne would be in his sights before long.

(Others leave, gradually improve and peak much later; I talk a fair bit about Dominic Solanke in my most recent book, and also about how many big, late-20s/early-30s strikers were doing well in clubs all over Europe.)

But loans can also discombobulate. In a season on loan, players can end up playing for four different managers if that club becomes a mess, and if you have four of five loans in a row, that can mean one big mess after another; even if all adversity can serve as a good lesson, as long as it doesn’t swallow you up.

Then there’s Ben Doak.

“There have been few Scottish players in the past decade who have received as much hype as winger Ben Doak,” the BBC said this weekend about the teenager (still only 18!) who shone for his country.

He’s doing very well at Middlesbrough on loan, and he’s someone who I’ve raved about since his first U18 game for the club, when he’d just turned 16. I watched all his early games, and he was special.

For that season he just went past defender after defender; inside, outside, slowed them down, sped them up, twisted their blood. Obviously he couldn’t do that aged 16 or 17 against senior pros, albeit he showed flashes in his handful of senior games for the Reds. And he didn’t have the final ball yet for top-level football.

I was concerned by talk he might be sold in the summer, which didn’t make sense to me, unless he was the one driving it (with that kind of Rhian Brewster/Bobby Duncan impatience, often driven by third parties, and which they frequently soon, or later regret). With Mo Salah turning 33 and out of contract in the summer, Doak has to be in the club’s long-term thinking, unless there’s something amiss.

As fast as Doak is, pace generally rises with average age for both sprinters and footballers from 18 to 19, 19 to 20, and so on, up to 23-25. (There are other forms of quickness, and Doak also has quick feet and quick acceleration. He’s also quick over 50 yards, but as a smaller winger, maybe not as quick as the big sprinters.)

In some Boro highlights I noticed Doak with this slightly weirder new stance when facing up to defenders, upright with swaying shoulders, as he tries to take on the fullback and/or their cover; it looks a bit awkward, but he’s preparing to accelerate, and seems to be twitching to confuse as to which shoulder he’ll drop. He’s developing his game, clearly.

Once he’s able to regularly terrorise 2nd-tier defenders, and defenders for international teams who may not be elite, then over time he’ll get faster, sharper, stronger and gain more stamina, to go at them again and again.

He’ll learn when to pass, and improve his finishing skills, just as Salah had to as a teen and in his early 20s, as a famously bad finisher at the time who was given extra training to resolve the issue.

Rio Ngumoha, who arrived at Liverpool from Chelsea this summer, has only just turned 16 but already looks too good for U18 level. He’s sensational on the left wing. But it’s a long process to first team regular; ditto for Trey Nyoni. They all need careful management, and for us to be patient. Ngumoha trained with the Chelsea first team at 15, and has done so again at Liverpool. But are young players themselves aware of the injury risks?

You hear a lot about Ethan Nwaneri at Arsenal (17), but he played 14 league minutes for Arsenal last season, and has 11 minutes this season. The League Cup is his proving ground. You won’t see him become like Michael Owen and a regular starter aged 17.

Mikey Moore of Spurs looks outstanding too, and is getting minutes having just turned 17. But if any kids like that played regularly these days, you feel their bodies will break down; the odds certainly seem high.

(Again, I’m not a doctor, but to cure my glaucoma I recently performed the first full optical transplant from barreleye fish to human, which made sense, given their telescopic nature. It would of course be extremely foolish to expect to see quick results, or indeed, to see anything at all; but I do now have a real hankering for plankton.)

On Spurs, I liked the look of Brennan Johnson at Forest three years ago in the Championship, and he was 20 at the time. He’d just had a good loan in League One.

You can see the curve to succeeding in League One; then the Championship; then having half the output (purely in terms of goals) in the top flight with Forest, which may be twice as hard; then moving to Spurs and struggling (and getting abuse); before now scoring something like 10 goals for club and country since turning 23 around the end of last season. That’s just using goals as a metric, but it will be part of a general improvement.

Indeed, I’ve read a few examples relating to Spurs lately.

In 2015, Mauricio Pochettino said teenager Josh Onomah was “a special boy, a special player” and said there it was “impossible to set a limit”. He didn’t make it at Spurs, and ended up without a club by his mid-20s, and at 27 is trying to rebuild his career.

“I would say at the time, in my late teens, I wasn’t as focused,” he says. “There were little distractions around that time, I just moved out by myself.”

By distractions, does he mean having a good time off the pitch? “Yeah, I’ll say that,” he says. “I didn’t have the right sort of people around me. I’m not blaming them, it’s just what it was. I got distracted. In the academy, I was one of the best players and had huge potential. I just didn’t keep my eyes on the prize, really.

“If I was talking to my younger self I’d say, ‘There’s plenty of time to do all of that, just right now this is prime time, this is your learning stage, just focus on that. Listen to the older pros around you and when your chance comes, don’t go through the motions, you’ve got to take it’.”

(I mean, this sounds like the story of why so many Man United players have gone off the rails.)

Also at Spurs, Troy Parrott was going to be the next Harry Kane, and is now playing in the Dutch league. Talking of the pressure as the next big thing, he said:

“When I was a bit younger, I'll tell the truth, it used to get to me a bit. Just trying to live up to the hype in a way at such a young age where it was never going to happen that early, football's never so easy. It was more about growing up a bit and trying to block the noise out.”

Dominic Solanke is someone I know Liverpool had a buyback clause on, but his maturing came only after that had expired (but the Reds still bagged £9m from the enduring sell-on clause, mind). Solanke remains a great case study, as everyone at Liverpool knew he was special, but it needed that next step or two.

“For sure, I feel like when I first came I was quite young. I have done a lot of learning, a lot of developing and stuff. I am a lot more mature now and naturally I am going to be in a better position.”

Fame, puts you there where things are hollow

I don’t know enough about American sports, but the insanely competitive and well-attended college system seems to pit late teens against late teens, and athletes enter the pro scene older, wiser and stronger.

In a quote from almost 20 years ago about LeBron James (these days a minority stakeholder in Liverpool FC), you can see the difference to football:

“Denver Nuggets coach George Karl told Sports Illustrated: ‘It’s weird talking about a 20-year-old kid being a great player, but he is a great player ... He’s the exception to almost every rule’.”

Yet how many times have teenage footballers (soccer) been labelled as already great? Quite a lot.

Teenage footballers labelled as greats, to lesser or greater extents, include Pele, Maradona, Messi, Michael Owen, both Ronaldos, Wayne Rooney, Pedri, Gavi, Jude Bellingham, and most recently, Lamine Yamal. (Plus many others.)

Would you get a 16-year-old playing NBA or, heaven forbid, the more brutal NFL?

(Googling the youngest NFL players, they all seem to be amongst the “youngest ever” if drafted at 20 or 21. And, “Amobi Okoye made history as the youngest player ever drafted by the NFL in 2007, at the age of 19.”)

I also worry for the psyche of anyone who becomes famous as a teen; it has to stunt some emotional growth, in some ways, and give you a weird outlook on the world, and do weird things to your ego.

I’m not sure fame has worked out well for anyone in the long-term; it’s something a lot of people want, and then quickly tire of, and soon come to hate, albeit sometimes love-hate. (And child stars, in general, are on a fast train to Totally Fucked Up.) And I think social media is totally toxic, in multiple ways, for anyone who has a following.

I think players who emerge a bit later are able to remain more grounded, especially if they’ve been at lower levels first.

One final challenge for almost all young players is the comedown after a debut, and that seeming like they’ve made it; only to maybe go back to playing in the U18s or U21s – and even the U21s level in England is pretty rubbish, with most of the best U21 players out on loan or in first teams. You play in a League Cup final for Liverpool, but it’s back into the youth team.

The U21s often feels like an U18 competition, mixed with a few of the older players who will never make it, with nothing at stake, and a handful of spectators. It’s hardly college sport in the US.

Development

All this means that the next 12 months can see a lot of further development from various younger Liverpool players (in the way that Gravenberch has had a quantum leap between 21 and 22), with another manager who is happy to put faith in them, as he showed in Holland – but who inherited a large squad of properly established players aged 21-33.

Arne Slot’s record for keeping players fit also actually works against youngsters getting meaningful game-time; injuries are usually the route into the team, as seen with Alexander-Arnold in 2016, and at various times when Klopp was without 10 or 12 players. The kids played in the League Cup final and other games because there was no one else, even if he trusted them. But they hadn’t ousted the senior pros.

If you keep all the senior pros fit and healthy, then even the rotation is just between them and other senior pros, all of whom need minutes to stay sharp.

But next summer could see a bit more change, including perhaps some younger players stepping up to replace more senior ones, with Alisson, van Dijk and Salah all vulnerable to age and/or contract situation, along with Alexander-Arnold’s contract also due to expire.

Such departures may be easier next summer when Slot has his style more imbedded and he knows more about the players coming through, and they’re all a year older.

I won’t keep talking about The Contract Trio (and Alisson), but while I’d want all of them to stay (if they want to, on reasonable terms and on reasonable-length contracts), you have Bradley as a potentially elite stay-wide right-back as he ages from 21 to 22; Quansah to potentially develop similarly, just as Sepp van den Berg did in Germany, in his case to lead to a big transfer fee; Ben Doak as a young option and Federico Chiesa as an older option to replace the even older Salah, while it’s hard to know what can be expected of Kaide Gordon; and the already elite Giorgi Mamardashvili has perhaps a decade at the top ahead of him, to replace Alisson in 2025, especially if the letter’s hamstrings remain problematic.

To me, it’s not so much the kids who are going to be ready, but those aged 21-23, where the law of averages say that pace, strength and stamina can all still be improved, and gaining wisdom and experience is a given.

It feels increasingly like you have to see these young players come through the age-related injuries from 17-21 that seem more common, and hope they still have the potential for greatness on the other side; and that their bodies develop in positive ways, as they grow and change. Even Curtis Jones is just hopefully exiting that stage, aged 23.

Stefan Bajcetic**, on loan at Salzburg, is maybe still on the younger side (still only 19, for another week or so), and Doak is too, but even someone like Calvin Ramsay could find it all click if the injuries are behind him, and the talented and resolute Tyler Morton is still only 21; while first-teamer (but not yet XI starter) Harvey Elliott should only improve.

(** Liverpool tried to sign Romeo Lavia, a little bit older, and Lavia ended up missing all of last season with injury.)

As I’ve also said many times, at 21, players like Salah, van Dijk, Alisson, Fabinho, Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino, Andy Robertson, Luis Díaz and various others were merely promising at 21 – none was close to being a great.

Most needed several transfers and a lack of impact to age into their best physical and mental selves. They took longer, but reached the top a bit later, and stayed there.

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