We moan about overpaying for players, both wages and transfer fees, so we can’t moan when the club refuses to pay an inflated salary to an unproven player, no matter his ‘potential’.

What we should be asking is did we insert a ‘buy back’ clause or a ‘sell-on’ clause when we sold him.
This is the area we really are missing out. We can’t give every young player sufficent game time to satisfy them, but we can ensure we benefit financially if the player ‘comes good’ after being sold.

However, Liverpool in general have a terrible record in bringing young talent through from their academy. I can’t believe Pacheco is STILL there, scraping into Europa League squads, while players like El Zhar, Danny Guthrie, Adam Hammil have had to waste the formative years of their careers doing similar before being farmed out.

Sums it up when Spearing is the only real consistent success story of the last 5 years (and he’s terrible and rightly slumming it at Bolton now). This list sums it up – scroll down to 2000s and 2010 – list of ‘graduates’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_F.C._Reserves_and_Academy