Liverpool will use Wembley win to lure gifted kids

WE saw opposite sides of the football spectrum at Wembley last weekend. One team, Liverpool, blooding young players. Another, Chelsea, who have spent zillions. The defeat will have been doubly painful to Chelsea because of that. As I write this, Liverpool will be targeting kids from other teams in England and beyond, and you can bet your life they will use Sunday to make their case. Jurgen Klopp will have had to trust his instincts when fielding those young players. Of course, he would have had confidence in them. But to turn up at Wembley? And deal with that pressure? He could not have been entirely sure. The debut of one of my less-remembered signings as Liverpool manager shows how, when it comes to blooding young players, you often have to act on instinct that a player will be up to the task you are asking of him. Rob Jones, who I signed from Crewe Alexandra, had been with us for only two or three days when I sent him out to face Manchester United, our biggest rivals, at Old Trafford in 1991. I could see in Rob’s few training sessions with us that he was a talent but at Old Trafford he was up against Ryan Giggs, who was in his pomp at the time. As a manager, you’re looking at him in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the game and wondering, ‘How is he going to deal with this? Does Ryan Giggs get past him a couple of times and then his head is doing a 360?’ Rob was named man of the match in a goalless draw. Sunday’s win doesn’t change anything for Liverpool. Those boys are not good enough to play for Liverpool every week, even though they performed well again in Wednesday’s FA Cup fifth-round win against Southampton. What you get with young players at the beginning of their careers is peaks and troughs. You still have to ease them in gently.