Liverpool head to the Northeast hoping to duplicate their performance against Newcastle from
earlier in the season, when they hit the European hopefuls for three at Anfield in Steven Gerrard's
return to action. Alan Pardew's side sit eight points above Liverpool in the table, however, level
on points with Chelsea and only five off Spurs in fourth.
Liverpool 0Ajax 6 Fischer 7′, 50, 68′, de Sa 44, Klaassen 58′, 65′ (pen)
Kickoff from St. Helens' Langtree Park ended up delayed by thirty minutes, but with the crowd
more than double the expected 4,000 it was worth the wait to see nearly 10,000 supporters come out
for Liverpool's young reserves.
Kickoff from Alvalade Stadium at 8:00PM GMT/3:00PM EST
If you're looking for Suarez-FA discussion, scroll down. Otherwise, the football.
Ways to Watch:
Match shown live on LFCTV, LFC.tv for eSeason subscribers, and the NextGen Series official
site.
Liverpool 4 Toni Silva 26′ 47′, Conor Coady (pen) 57′, Raheem Sterling
81′Molde 0
Liverpool Starting XI
Belford
McLaughlin, Sama, Widsom, Smith
Coady, Roddan
Silva, Suso, Sterling
Ngoo
Substitutes
Adorjan for Silva 62′
Morgan for Suso 82′
McGiveron for Sama 88′
Against Sporting Lisbon it took Liverpool most of a half to find their feet, and combined with
some poor finishing it added up to a heavy loss and a disappointing start to their NextGen Series
campaign.
Liverpool get their League Cup campaign underway tomorrow in Exeter, hoping to find some sort of
midweek success going early in the new season. It's not quite the type of midweek action we would
have hoped for, but it's football, it's a chance to see some of the less familiar faces get a run
out, and, at this point, it's a chance at silverware.
Vålerenga 3 Joao Teixeira 26′, Alberto Coelho 37′, Farley Rosa 86′Liverpool 0
Liverpool Starting XI
Belford
Wisdom, McGiven, Sama, Robinson
Coady, Shelvey, Silva, Suso, Sterling
Morgan
Substitutes
Adorjan for Shelvey 59′
King for Robinson 59′
Ngoo for Morgan 59′
The NextGen Series was always about pitting some of Europe's most promising academies against
the best, and for Liverpool, coming up against the academy that has won the Portuguese youth
championships five years in a row and is widely considered amongst the best youth set-ups on the
continent was setting the bar awfully high right out of the gate.
Liverpool kickoff the NextGen Series from Anfield at 19:00 GMT/2:00PM EST
An intriguing experiment begins tomorrow; an under-19 Champions League-style competition with
some of the best academies in Europe. And the home-and-away group stage starts out with a bang for
Liverpool, as they host what on paper looks set to be their toughest foe of that opening round when
Sporting Lisbon comes to town.
Liverpool 4: Poulsen 19′, N'Gog 22′, Coady 72′, Carroll 85′
Guangdong 3: Steer 46′, Lin 90′, Hongbo 92′
And so a new season begins. Or at least the road to it does. Certainly without the extended
break forced by the European Championships and World Cup in recent years it doesn't feel like as
much of a wait as in the past, when half the players would have just now been starting into their
short summer breaks following international commitments.
After a day spent trying to calm nerves frayed by the transfer season to varying degrees of
success, it's back to the offseason grind of news drip-fed into maws eager for something tangible
to hold onto as summer drags along. This, then, is all the Liverpool news that's fit to drip
today...
* After making his debut with Liverpool in 1976, Sammy Lee would go on to become a key
player in midfield for the next decade, playing an important role in European Cup and league
triumphs before eventually being pushed out by injuries and Jan Mølby in 1986.
It's Monday. It's the offseason. So that must mean we've got some Xabi Alonso-related tidbits to
get to that will make us feel all warm and fuzzy in the afterglow of a lost romance whose embers
are kept stoked by furtive, whispered words of hope and the possibility that all might not truly be
lost.
One year ago today, Christian Purslow sacked Rafa Benitez and the club began its nosedive into
the abyss, descending from a stumbled-to seventh place finish towards Roy Hodgson, Joe Cole,
Christian Poulsen, and Paul Koncheskey, while backroom battles brewed and potential suitors fell by
the wayside.
I guess it's not surprising that the influx of opposition supporters have stopped coming by to
tell us how great their club is and how shit Liverpool is it was a futile effort anyway, and I
don't know that it ever really got off the ground, but the results of the weekend did more than
enough to remind everyone that a) Barcelona are just that good, and b) Liverpool still stand alone
as the most successful English club in European football.
The sudden rise this season of Liverpool's revitalised academy has been a major talking point
around these parts, and with good reason. On the foundation set by Rafa Benitez towards the end of
the 2008-2009 season, Academy Director Frank McParland and former Barcelona youth coaches Pep
Segura and Rodolfo Borrell have overseen a stunning revival, and though it may still be too early
to fully judge their successes, there seems a very real possibility that a golden generation of
Liverpool talent is currently working its way up through the age groups, into the reserves, and
perhaps from there on into the first team.
