When it comes to judging success at a football club, the results on the pitch for the first-team will be the main the deciding factor.
But there are other vital areas where important work is done. Liverpool pride themselves on having a successful infrastructure behind the scenes, which in turns enables the players at senior level to flourish. Underpinning that is the Academy. For the past eight years, Alex Inglethorpe has been the key figure behind the success in Kirkby.
On this day in 2014, Inglethorpe was promoted to his role of Academy Director, a position he still holds to this day. Ever since, the former Tottenham Hotspur youth coach has been in charge of making sure the players coming through the Academy are given the best possible footballing education.
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Inglethorpe left Spurs in 2012 to link up with Liverpool as a reserve team coach. Even before his promotion two years later, he had been familiarising himself with the set up at Kirkby and the young players coming through.
It was an appointment that certainly pleased then-manager Brendan Rodgers.
“I’m delighted that Alex has decided to join us in our journey to create a philosophy that runs directly through the club,” said Rodgers in 2012. “He has many years of experience in youth football and also managed at senior level.
“His unswerving belief and commitment to our way of working will bring continued success in this role.”
Inglethorpe would continue to work alongside Rodgers for the next few years, and that continued to be the case after his promotion in 2014. The former Spurs coach at the time stressed the importance of Rodgers in the process of building Academy players up to be ready for the first-team.
“We’re really lucky,” Inglethorpe told the ECHO in 2014 . “We have a manager and a first-team staff that recognise talent, and are brave enough to put players in if they’re good enough.
“That’s vital for any young lad. You have to see that there is a chance there. There has got to be a glimmer of, light at the end of the tunnel, otherwise it is pointless being around.
“The trick for us at the Academy is not just to get a player a debut. Debuts are one thing, but players that play 40, 50 games and beyond is what we are after.
“My remit for the last 10 years of working has been to try and produce Champions League quality players, irrespective of what the first team are doing at the time. That doesn’t change.
“And to become a Champions League player, you need special attributes. Physically, technically, tactically and mentally, you need to be elite. It’s a huge challenge, both for our players and for our coaches, but it’s one that we are happy to take on.”
Even then, Inglethorpe’s plan wasn’t just about focusing on the players at Under-23 level. At the time, Raheem Sterling was one of the brightest talents coming through the youth system, after he joined as a 15-year-old from Queens Park Rangers.
Inglethorpe made it clear from the start that he was in the business for the long game. A selfless attitude that has arguably played a key role to the success of the club eight years later.
“I’m realistic,” said Inglethorpe. “I know that if I am trying to address issues at U6, U7, U8 level, then the likelihood is that I am not going to be around to reap the benefits further down the line!
“But I don’t think that is any reason not to do it. The easiest thing to do is to focus on the short-term and look only at the U18s and the U16s, but that is not what I want. I want a complete Academy, from six through to 21.
“There’s an expression, ‘society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in’, and I think that applies with the Academy. I may not get the benefit from the work we do at U6 and U7 level, but I still want to do it to safeguard the future.”
As a player gets older, Inglethorpe’s philosophy edges more favourably towards the loan system. It’s been a tactic that has helped Liverpool down the years, and is likely to continue long into the future.
Harvey Elliott is the latest example of a player who has returned to Anfield and thrived after a productive loan spell. For others, like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones, being thrown straight into the first-team can be the answer.
When Inglethorpe was at Tottenham, he had this philosophy. It saw him work with some high profile players, one of which has gone on to score quite a few goals in the Premier League.
“I’m convinced, and I know I’ve said it before, but these players have got to have a career before their Liverpool career,” Inglethorpe told The Bib Theorists in 2014 . “Now, that’s not the same for every single player but for some it is the truth.
“With players that I’ve worked with at Tottenham, who are just making their first steps into the Premier League now, some of them have followed that route, some of them haven’t – I’m talking about players like (Harry) Kane, (Nabil) Bentaleb, Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason. Again it’s about finding the right opportunity at the right time.”
On the subject of Kane, it was Inglethorpe who played a key role in nurturing the striker's talents at a young age. Back in 2015, the now-Liverpool Academy Director spoke about the first time he saw Kane during his days in North London.
“I first saw Harry when, as the under-18 coach, I would take the under-14s once a week,” Inglethorpe told The Telegraph. “Harry would have been 13 at the time, and given that his is a late July birthday, he was still playing catch up with some of the group from a physical perspective. But he was always a promising technician and a very genuine young man with a wonderful desire to improve.”
While bringing players through might be part of the job, recruiting youngsters from other clubs is another. Liverpool have brought plenty of talented young stars through the doors from other clubs during Inglethorpe's tenure.
Some of the players to have made the move to Merseyside include Kaide Gordon, Calum Scanlon, as well as overseas gems like Stefan Bajectic, Mateusz Musialowski, Melkamu Frauendorf. They are the more recent acquisitions, but Inglethorpe admitted just last year that there is a very thoughtful plan behind signing young players from other clubs.
“I think we’ve either been quite fortunate or quite good in terms of the players we’ve picked up from other clubs in recent years,” Inglethorpe told The Athletic in April 2021. “If you look back to players like Kevin Stewart, Lawrence Vigouroux, Ovie Ejaria, Rafa Camacho, we’ve picked them up for nothing, or next to nothing. And with a change of position or a change of dynamic, we’ve certainly been able to increase the value of those players, even if they haven’t stayed on at Liverpool.
“We try hard to be respectful of the club’s money and try to spend it like it’s our own. (But) We’ll always recruit if we see a gap that needs to be filled and we see a pathway for someone who we can develop and improve.”
“What we’ve always tried to do is look for value for money,” Inglethorpe added. “We’re a club that tries to see maybe the hidden gem, right from first-team level down. When you look at the success of the first team in recent seasons, many of the players signed weren’t obvious and weren’t chased by everyone in Europe. They were smart deals in terms of appreciating where they would fit in.
“The first team, with maybe a couple of exceptions, they’re an outstanding group of ‘silver medallists’ who have been honed into a team of gold medallists. I’ve worked with a lot of players and I’ve always subscribed to the idea based on my coaching experiences that it tends to be the silver medallists who tend to really come through. It’s a similar strategy at Academy level.”
Club legends down the years were nurtured at Liverpool’s Academy. Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher are the obvious two from the last generation, now Alexander-Arnold is the latest staking a claim to be in the same bracket.
With 228 appearances, six major trophies and plenty of assists to his name at the age of 23, right-back from West Derby is well on his way to join that particular club. Inglethorpe has played a key role in his development.
"When I was making mistakes, I was a sore loser", Alexander-Arnold told BBC Sport in October 2019
"My reaction wasn't right. If I made a mistake, I would be out of the game for a minute or two. If I lost at the end of training, I would kick balls away, make a bad tackle. But I realised that wasn't the right way.
"Alex Inglethorpe, the first coach who stood up against me, told me that would hold me back and it was something we worked on for one season to make sure it stopped happening.
"It would eat me up a lot – but after you calmed down, you would realise how bad you have been; how it is not OK to treat people like that.
"It is about working hard, using your mentality as a positive and motivation."
November 2020 saw Liverpool relocate their training base from Melwood to the new £50m AXA Training Centre in Kirkby. It enabled the first-team and Academy to be based all in one place, which helped fuel a vision that Inglethorpe wants for the future of the club.
“First and foremost, it’s an incredible sight to look down the path and see the first-team building 300 metres away. It’s a very obvious reminder to everyone of the direction they are hoping to travel in,” Inglethorpe told The Athletic five months after moving into the new centre.
“Just like at Melwood, young players are being promoted at times to train with the senior squad but what has changed is the spontaneity of it. Proximity means if there’s a last-minute change it’s easily accommodated now.
“When the first team aren’t training, it’s not unusual to see the first-team staff watching the under-23s or the under-18s train. The intention going forward is that, at times, we’ll watch the first-team train too.”
And so the good work at Liverpool's Academy continues under Inglethrope, with the Reds guaranteed a bright future while he's around.
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