It's simplistic simply to credit that though. Jordan Rossiter would have been 11 when Segura and Borrell arrived, but all of the other kids who have made a mark had just as much development coaching under Piet Hamberg and even Heighway. Either that or they were bought in for elsewhere. Sterling, Suso, Ibe, Tricket-Smith and so on and so were all purchased and - save for a couple of games for Sterling, placed straight into the U18s. Wisdom was already an U18 by the time Segura and Borrell arrived. I'm not saying they didn't improve him, but most of these players were well along the way to being the players they were going to be by the time they arrived at Liverpool, and the ones live Robinson, Flanagan, Coady, Lussey, Dunn - these had just as much coaching at Liverpool from those before Segura and Borrell.
At the moment we're a pretty good finishing school for young players, and we'll actually give them a chance - which frankly isn't something to be underrated. Not sure you'd look at it as the FA and say "let's do that!" though... Well, they might, they're pretty easily led by popular opinion.
But on the professional footballers bit - Liverpool produced the most professional footballers before Segura and Borrell arrived. The problem was that most of them ended up in the lower leagues. They were producing professionals though. So here's a bit of devil's advocate for you - if the only players who come through are Sterling, Ibe, Wisdom, Suso and others we've bought in from elsewhere, while Flanagan, Coady, Robinson, Lussey et al go on to have careers at lower league clubs - what's changed, other than spending big on the best 16 year olds in the country?
This is the problem with judging youth players in this country. We would attribute all the recent success to Rafa and the Barcelona coaches - and they deserve plenty of credit - but they've been at the club four years. The club gets youngsters from the age of 9. We're talking about our U14s team. The real success of this is going to be played out over the next few seasons when we see what a difference this coaching has made to blank slates, rather than players who already have some idea of themselves. Everything I've read, from Ajax through to the New Zealand FA, suggests that the key ages for player development technically, are up to the age of 12. At Ajax they mostly scouted youngsters under the age of 12 based on their physical ability, knowing they were still young enough to develop the technique.
This is why debates on youth development are so stupid when played out in the media. We're told the Academies aren't producing the players they were supposed to, but most of the kids who went into the academy systems at the age of 9 are not 22/23. If - God forbid - you actually give them a little leeway to find their feet over the first couple of years. Look, players like Sturridge, Cleverley, Welbeck and Henderson (just off the top of my head) came through in those first years. They're the first year or so of the kids who had the full academy education. World beaters? Nah. Clearly very good players though. Two midfielders who are economical in possession and don't give the ball away cheaply, and an attacker who isn't afraid to attempt - and succeed - in trying some audacious things. And Daniel Sturridge.
You want to look at the players coming through the academy set ups from the young ages and you'll see this as a theme - Oxlade-Chamberlain, Zaha, Sterling, Shelvey, Redmond, Ince, Townsend, Barkley, even Sammy bloody Ameobi - academies have been developing attacking players who aren't afraid to be audacious. Who aren't scared taking their opponents on, or running with the ball, or attempting the audacious pass. Then look at the midfielders - Wilshere, Tom Carroll, Will Hughes, Ward-Prowse, Coady, Cleverley and Henderson as mentioned, Lussey, Rossiter, Loftus-Cheek, Lewis Baker, Alex Pritchard and so on and so on (I'm naming a lot of Liverpool players because I see them more, but there's no reason to think that it's not happening at Arsenal or Aston Villa or wherever). Academies are producing a technically good midfielders who don't give the ball away cheaply, who can and do receive the ball under pressure without losing possession, and can turn on the ball.
Problem is that most of them will end up out on loan in the lower divisions because there's too much money in the top flight for clubs to lean on their academies to make up a bulk of their squad. And without B-teams to give them an experience of professional football whilst keeping them at their parent clubs, that's a lottery. We've sent Coady away to a club who play him out of position, who sold their only #10 and have now been taken over.
The real problem with the academy set up though is that most clubs want their team to be attacking, to have the ball and play attractive football. They then send their players away with England, who hire the likes of Noel Blake, Stuart Pearce, Hodgson and, y'know what, even Capello. Coaches of massively differing abilities but who are all, ultimately, more preoccupied with shape and control of space than they are with what a player can do on the ball. So when the U20s go away to Turkey in the summer with James Ward-Prowse and Ross Barkley as part of their midfield - two players who have started the Premiership season really strongly - they're not being shown patterns of play when in possession, and working out how they bring their teammates into play. They're being shown where to drop back into when possession is lost. This is England. Small nation mentality, except even the smaller nations want to play like the bigger nations, so you get Iraq, Chile and Egypt turning up and wanting to pass the ball and control the game in possession against England. And they manage it. Meanwhile, every English player who Has been taught these principles day in day out at a their academies and now with their first teams... They're sitting in, keeping shape, watching the game play out in front of them.
Must be the academies fault.