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Alex Inglethorpe admits Liverpool’s talented youngsters may need to be patient if they are to break into Brendan Rodgers’ first team.

The Reds’ academy director, speaking exclusively to the ECHO, said that it would be increasingly difficult for young players to make an immediate impact at senior level, as the club looks to compete for honours at both domestic and European level.

At present, Rodgers’ first-team squad contains just two players to have come through the ranks at Anfield – skipper Steven Gerrard and young full-back Jon Flanagan. Raheem Sterling, who has shone over the past 12 months, was signed from Queens Park Rangers as a 15-year-old.

At the club’s Academy, there are high hopes surrounding a clutch of gifted young players. But Inglethorpe believes that with expectation levels rising all the time, it would be unfair to ask any of those starlets to come in and shine instantly.

He said: “You can count the number of teenagers that are playing in the Premier League, regularly, on one hand.

“Raheem Sterling has broken through very young, and Wayne Rooney did so a few years back, but look at the statistics. Not many teenagers do that.

“The average age of most Premier League teams is mid-20s or high-20s, depending on which team.

“So when you get a kid of 17 or 18 years of age, who isn’t playing every week in the first team, you can have a tendency to think they’re behind schedule, when the truth is that he isn’t.

In pictures: Academy players in recent years

“There is no shame in a 21-year-old not being able to get in ahead of a Daniel Sturridge, for example.

“Maybe a 21-year-old Daniel Sturridge would not have been able to break into this team at the moment.

“We have some fantastic players, so it’s very difficult to dislodge them for a young player.

“It’s different in somewhere like, for example, Holland, where if you’re not playing in the Eredivisie at 17 or 18 then you have a problem. Or in France, Germany or Portugal, say.

“But in England, there are not many young players playing regularly, which is the challenge we face.”

Inglethorpe pointed out that at this summer’s World Cup, only eight teenagers (including Liverpool duo Sterling and Divock Origi) played any minutes, and says such a statistic shows the challenge facing young players who want to play at the highest level.

He added: “We are looking to produce Champions League quality players here.

“Only eight teenagers played at the World Cup, so if we accept that the Champions League is a better quality tournament, which it has to be because it is the best players in the world playing for the best clubs, then how many 17 or 18-year-old will we be seeing in the Champions League? I can’t think of many.

“For me, between 17 and, say, 22 or 23 years of age, you need what I call ‘psychological stamina’ to be able to see out the most frustrating, the most daunting part of the journey.

“That is the part where there is still so much to be done, so much work to go, and you have to be patient when maybe you’re not playing at the level that you want to be at. That’s perhaps the hardest thing for a young player.

“You need to patient and strong mentally.”