Liverpool FC want Academy/Melwood ‘One Club’ supersite

Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre has explained the club are looking into the possibility of bringing the club’s youth programme back together with first team training, as we revealed back in March.

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At present, the club’s youth system is based at the Liverpool Football Club Academy in Kirkby, north of Liverpool. While the first team continue to train at Melwood, in the West Derby area of the city.

Ayre says the club have a vision of bringing the set-up onto one site, allowing the future players of the club a glimpse at their idols in the first team.

It is thought the plans would give youngsters further aspirations to succeed in the youth system, whilst complementing the ‘One Club’ policy Brendan Rodgers and owners Fenway Sports Group desire.

Ayre was speaking at a Liverpool Business Week breakfast with Everton chief executive Robert Elstone.

Ayre is quoted in Wednesday’s Liverpool Echo as saying about the idea, “It is something we have looked at in the past but for every decision like that it comes back to finding the right economic model.

“But it’s something we’re actually doing a piece of work on at the moment, another sort of feasibility study if you like, because one of the great things they have at Finch Farm which we currently don’t have is a situation where you have those young players coming in in the morning, seeing Steven Gerrard turning right while they turn left and hoping one day that they take the same route.”

“We make it work – and it is working – but there is definitely more value in having everyone together. And if we can find a solution to that it is absolutely something we would do.”

The Echo’s report on the plans also includes a brief history of Melwood and the club’s training evolution, and is well worth a read.

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