Academy column: Otten Cup trip and Trent progress
In this week's Academy column, U18s manager Neil Critchley previews the trip to Holland for the Otten Cup and discusses the progress of his captain Trent Alexander-Arnold.
We started our new season with a 1-0 defeat at Manchester City last weekend but there were many positives to take overall. We could easily have been winning the game at half-time but we missed a couple of opportunities and their goalkeeper made a brilliant save to deny Trent. We then conceded 45 seconds after the restart. We had a great chance right at the end of the game to equalise but it wasn't to be our day, but I did feel we deserved a point.
This new group of players have come together really well in pre-season and worked extremely hard. They have listened to what our Academy director Alex Inglethorpe and me have been telling them and have done very well so far. It is a young group even though we brought a few of them into the U18s group early last year. We had seven or eight first years starting the game at City and most of the teams we will come up against this year will be mostly made up of second year players. That bodes well for the future.
Trent was given his first-team chance in pre-season when he played at Swindon and that was a brilliant experience for him. He is only 16 but he handled it really well. Trent is a player who can play in the centre of midfield or at right-back and is quite versatile. He has got a lot of good attributes in terms of his athleticism, his passing and he has great heart and desire. He is a competitive boy, a local boy who has been at the Academy for a very long time, since he was six years old. He has got things to work on, as have all the boys, and he knows that but we are hopeful he can make some strides in the future.
Our young striker from Portugal, Toni Gomes, is starting his first full season with the U18s and his partnership with Yan Dhanda has been encouraging so far. They have both scored goals in pre-season and they are going to be a real handful for opposing defences this season because they can do the unexpected. What we need to do is get them combining with each other a bit better and once they do that I think they will cause more problems for the opposition. They are both exciting to watch and I’m sure the supporters will enjoy watching them on LFCTV this season.
Another exciting player we have brought into the group is Bobby Adekanye, who is a winger we got from Barcelona. He has integrated into the group very well and is a lovely and very humble boy. Bobby has a good personality and has mixed in straight away with all of the boys. We have just got to be patient and wait for his international clearance to come through. He is a player who is capable of taking players on, scoring and assisting goals, so he will be one to watch for the LFCTV viewers this season.
This weekend we are in Holland for the Otten Cup, hosted by PSV Eindhoven with the matches taking place at their training ground. We got an invitation last year and it’s been running now for a number of years. We were extremely impressed with the competition last year and we got to the final. Unfortunately, we lost but we were delighted to get the invite to come back and hopefully we can give another good account of ourselves. We play Guangzhou Evergrande on Friday and then two games on Saturday against Red Bull Brasil and PSG. Red Bull Brazil beat us in the final last year so we’ve got a tough group. This is a wonderful experience for the boys and so important for their development to play against some of the best young players all around the world.
We then return home to prepare for our first home game of the season against Middlesbrough in front of the live LFCTV cameras next Saturday (August 22 at 12.30pm BST). We are looking forward to it because it seems an age since we last played at the Kirkby Academy. It’s always nice to play on your home pitch, especially on the television, and I know the boys are really looking forward to it. Over the last few years I’ve been working with the U18s we have done reasonably well at home and scored a lot of goals, so hopefully that can continue against Middlesbrough.
This season Alex [Inglethorpe] will be working alongside me with the U18s, with Mike Garrity now coaching the U21s under Michael Beale. Alex is a great coach and the young lads will get the benefit of his coaching as well. Our performance analyst Scott Mason works closely with us and does a great job. Mike was fantastic for me and he has moved up to the U21s this season. What is so special about this club and the Academy is the integration between the ages and that is down to Alex. He has everyone working closely together, so when the U18s don’t have a game, I will go and be part of the U21s group with Michael and the lads. The phrase 'one club mentality' does get used quite often but it definitely rings true at Liverpool and our Academy.