Academy column: Forest Youth Cup test and RAF visit

We continue our FA Youth Cup run with a fifth-round tie against a very good Nottingham Forest side at the City Ground tonight. It’s a fantastic chance for the boys to play at a first-team stadium on a lovely pitch and everybody is really looking forward to to it. Playing at a stadium like the City Ground is why this competition is so great because it’s probably as close as you get to replicating a first-team environment for our players. You find out so much about the players in terms of their character, personality and how they cope on a night like this. It will be a test, especially if there is a big crowd, but if these lads are going to play for Liverpool’s first team in the future in the biggest games then they have to be able to handle nights like this. I hope there is as many people there as possible on the night because we want to see how the boys respond under pressure and we want them to thrive in those situations.

We have deservedly got through to the fifth round and we want that run to continue, but we are under no illusions as to the size of the task we face. I know the Nottingham Forest coach, Jack Lester, and how he will have his team set up. They are top of the league in their division, hard to play against, well organised and don’t concede many goals. They play high-tempo football so it will be a an extremely tough test for us. Our head of Academy football operations, Nick Marshall, used to be in charge of Nottingham Forest’s academy and he knows them very well, so I have been speaking to him this week to tap into his experience and knowledge. I think it will be quite an even game on the night and maybe it will come down to a mistake or moment of brilliance. It’s about who handles the occasion the best. We’ve spoken about that, but these are the games you want to be involved in so we can’t wait for it.

We believe we have some really good players and we have a strong squad this year with real competition for places. Adam Phillips has been influential for us so far after scoring in the third-round win over Ipswich Town and providing two assists against Cardiff City in the last round. Adam can play in a number of different positions and his quality of passing is outstanding. He has many strings to his bow and is a really important member of our team. Ben Woodburn scored a goal to remember in the last round against Cardiff City and he is a young man with a lot of potential. He is only 16 but keeping his feet on the ground isn’t a problem for us because he is such a level-headed boy who is really humble. He has a tremendous attitude towards training and is a really focused individual. It’s just a case of guiding him along the way and his performances for the U18s team this season have been outstanding. We have some really exciting players in attack like Yan Dhanda, Ovie Ejaria, Toni Gomes, Paulo Alves and Brooks Lennon and it’s great competition, which is the way it should be at a club like Liverpool.

It’s been an unbelievable couple of weeks for the Academy really after seeing our manager Jürgen Klopp hand a lot of the young players a first-team opportunity in the FA Cup. You get a lot of satisfaction from seeing the likes of Cameron Brannagan, Connor Randall and Brad Smith play in the first team and do really well. It also gives great heart and inspiration to everyone at the Academy.

This week at the Academy we had a visit from the RAF Men’s Development squad. Phil Roscoe, our head of education and welfare, deserves a lot of credit for making this happen. We are always looking for different ways of developing our players, not just on the pitch but off it. We have a duty to our boys to make sure they develop as good people as well as good players. We like to take them out of their comfort zone from time to time and see how they cope in a different environment. You always learn something new about the players. We set this initiative up with the RAF and they came down for a training session and spent a day at the Academy. In a couple of weeks’ time we will repay the visit and we will go down to RAF Cosford for the boys to take part in two days of RAF recruit training. We are looking forward to it and it will be a bit of an eye-opener for one or two of the boys.