Tick tock, tick tock. There's now only a month until the January transfer window opens, with the fallout of the ongoing World Cup likely to ensure a busier than usual movement of players in the New Year.
Speculation surrounding possible incomings at Liverpool has only intensified. The manner in which Fenway Sports Group have approached recruitment has long been a major talking point among Reds supporters, not all happy to accept the owners' preference of operating within their means.
Such self-sufficiency is also reflected at the club's Academy, with their budget, while not insignificant, nevertheless dwarfed by the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea. Throw in Brexit rules that no longer permit the signing of foreign players under the age of 18 and the fact the North West is the footballing hotbed in the country, recruiting the next generation is arguably more difficult than ever.
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Not, though, impossible. And the fruits of such labours have been evident during the last 18 months, with Academy signings Kaide Gordon, Conor Bradley, Bobby Clark, Ben Doak and Stefan Bajcetic all making their first-team debuts.
And Academy manager Alex Inglethorpe says: "Matt Newberry (head of senior Academy recruitment) and his team deserve an awful lot of credit for bringing in players who are capable of being in the Academy. The truth is you never know if they are going to stay for one, two or three years, or whether it's going to be longer or if they jettison off into the first team after six months.
"Our role here is to prepare them for life in the first team, and we can do that by providing them with good habits on and off the pitch."
Bajcetic, who arrived in December 2020, was the last overseas signing by the Academy before the new Brexit rules came into operation. But Inglethorpe has explained Liverpool were prepared for the change.
"We were a little bit ahead of the curve," he says to the ECHO, speaking from his office at the Academy building in Kirkby. "We were keen to invest more into our pre-Academy and more into our local recruitment. The change in rules hasn't hit us as hard as perhaps it might have done. We have to ensure the recruitment team remains strong. The gravitas and history that Liverpool has is enough for most people. It's a destination, it's not a route to somewhere else. This is a place where players see themselves wanting to end up."
With Manchester duo City and United, along with neighbours Everton, all within close proximity, Inglethorpe admits the competition for taking on promising players is fierce. "Having worked in London, I am in a good place to compare that region with the North West," he says. "And the region here is far tougher. London is a huge place and trying to get anywhere there inside an hour is difficult.
"The reality is, for example Chelsea's training ground and Tottenham's ground may look only a certain amount of miles away, but it can take forever to get from one to the other. Here you are less than an hour away from three big clubs in Everton, City and United. It's a tough place to recruit from."
It's not just with Academy signings that Liverpool have to know the market. While not applicable to every up-and-coming player, a loan move can give youngsters a first taste of senior football and allow the Reds to gauge their future suitability.
At present Liverpool have 17 players out on loan, ranging from Leighton Clarkson in the Scottish Premiership to Marcel Pitaluga in the North West Counties League.
And Inglethorpe says: "Loans can make such a difference in terms of the development of players. Both ways are possible - you can have Trent Alexander-Arnold, Curtis Jones or Caoimhin Kelleher who haven't had a loan and have gone straight into the first team, but there are others who need games.
"It's quite logical when you think about it. Mohamed Salah's 'loan' before coming to Liverpool was perhaps 200-plus games in various leagues. It's very hard for a young player to come in and compete with someone who has got 200 games worth of experience. That's not to say they can't, but it's harder. For some players, going out on loan to accrue minutes and experience, it makes them a better proposition when they come back. Harvey Elliott is a good example of someone who went away and improved, Tyler Morton is on that journey."
Morton, who made his first-team breakthrough with Liverpool last season, has followed the path of Elliott by spending the season at Championship side Blackburn Rovers, where he has been a midfield regular in a team chasing automatic promotion to the Premier League.
"He's thoroughly enjoying it," says Inglethorpe. "He said to me the other day he's learned more in 20 games than a year of 21s games. It's a completely different learning ground for him, to be playing at that level every single week in a league that is really competitive and relentless. The beauty of the Championship is anyone can beat anyone, everyone is aware it is full of good players and highly competitive, and for Tyler to be one of the youngest players to be in midfield in the league, playing week in week out for a team near the top, it can only bode well for the future."
But how do Liverpool determine which players go on loan and where?
"It's a collaboration," says Inglethorpe. "It involves the first team, who may decide the player doesn't have a pathway into their team at the moment. Perhaps they have had experience of training with the first team but the pathway is blocked a little bit. It could just be the U21s is not providing them the level of competition they would need.
"Then between the first team, myself, (director of loan management) David Woodfine and (sporting director) Julian Ward, a decision will be made around where they can go. It's not as easy anymore as the youth loan has gone. I was a big fan of youth loans, it allowed players to go somewhere for a month and come back if it didn't quite work out. I'm not sure it's in a young player's best interests to go somewhere for six months and not play. But very often, if it's the player's first loan, they don't have the luxury of choice. You have to go out and do the hard yards and hope that earns the right to go somewhere else afterwards."
There is another benefit to using the loan market. By giving youngsters a senior platform on which to perform, they can raise their fee in the transfer market. In the last four years Liverpool have raised more than £90million in selling players who had enjoyed successful temporary spells elsewhere.
"Even if it doesn't quite work for players at Liverpool, the advantage for the club is, at the end of it, there's now a player there with a value," says Inglethorpe. "Someone like Ryan Kent, Harry Wilson, Rhian Brewster or Neco Williams, having that experience and proving to other people you can play in the league gives them a value. It's significant the return for the club makes it more than worthwhile."
*In tomorrow's final part of our exclusive chat, Alex Inglethorpe looks at some of the potential future Liverpool stars of the future and the importance of Vitor Matos
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