Liverpool in the Europa- Can our young boys take on the Young Boys?

This evening (Thursday 20th September), Liverpool will face Swiss side Young Boys at the Stade de Suisse. Brendan Rodgers has fielded a very young and relatively inexperienced side, but could this backfire on Liverpool?

Firstly, I must make clear that I am very much in favour of young players being given a chance to prove themselves in the first team. To have a successful club, you must have a successful academy and youth system. The young players can’t stay in the youth and reserve squads forever, and it is good to see the likes of Raheem Sterling making the step up to the regular first team. Liverpool are expected to win against a side such as Young Boys, so Rodgers might have made a good call in picking this game to give some of the younger players their chance.

However, I personally think that this is a bad strategy. I for one want to see Liverpool do well in the Europa league this season, and it would be awful if we were to lose to a side such as Young Boys, in a game which we should be able to win fairly comfortably. Youth should be fed into the first team slowly, not all thrown in at once. I know it is a possibility that all the young players will do really well and get a win for LFC, and I certainly hope this happens. However, I think we would have been better off only including a few young players in the side tonight, and fielding a mostly experienced team to try and secure the result we need.

On the other hand, as you will probably know, there is an extremely important Premier League clash with Manchester United on Sunday. I can see that players need to be rested for this game, as it is arguably more important than our fixture tonight against Young Boys. Hopefully, as Manchester United fielded an almost full strength squad in their game against Galatasaray in midweek, we will have an advantage over them. Most of our main players won’t have been in action for over a week when it comes to the game against United, so this could give us the edge we need to win our first game of the Premiership season.

Overall though, I think a bit more experience should have been included in the squad for tonight’s game against Young Boys. More experience would have made the win easier to seal, and playing so many young players is definitely a risk, but hopefully it will pay off. We shall have to see how things pan out tonight.