As Evan Ferguson became the fifth-youngest player to score a hat-trick in Premier League history in Brighton’s 3-1 victory over Newcastle United last weekend, Liverpool may have watched on ruefully.
The Reds had hoped to sign Ferguson from Bohemians in his native Ireland in 2021, but the striker turned them down in favor of a move to the Amex.
“I went to Liverpool a few times,” he revealed to The Athletic in the summer of 2022. “It’s a good club, but you see so many boys at Liverpool just fading away and there’s no chance to get in the first team.
Ferguson has now scored 14 goals in his first 33 appearances for Brighton’s senior side in all competitions, and reached double figures within 24 Premier League outings, netting at a rate of one every 116 minutes. Still only 18 years old, he’s already expected to be the club’s second sale surpassing $125m (£100m/€116m) after Moisés Caicedo joined Chelsea in the summer (via The Telegraph). According to Sky Sports’ Melissa Reddy, there’s even a belief that he could command a Premier League record fee himself, eclipsing his former teammate.
But was he right about Liverpool? Well, fellow 18-year-old Stefan Bajčetić, who joined from Celta Vigo the same year Ferguson elected to sign with Brighton, disagrees with his assessment.
“I would say it’s a great time to be a young player at Liverpool,” he told the club’s matchday programme ahead of the clash with Aston Villa. “The coach puts a lot of faith in young players and some of the players we sign as well are very young. I think in the future these players will be great for Liverpool.”
Bajčetić logged 931 minutes for the club last term, having broken into the first team at the turn of the year, and it would have been a lot more had he not suffered a season-ending injury in March.
In total, players aged 21 and under recorded 5,361 minutes of action for Liverpool in 2022/23, the second-highest figure of Jürgen Klopp’s tenure. The table below breaks it down season-by-season, and it’s worth noting we’ve removed Trent Alexander-Arnold’s numbers from his initial breakthrough in 2017/18 until his final under-21 campaign in 2020/21, because it offers a heavily distorted picture otherwise. In each of those years, he was responsible for somewhere between 50 and 80 per cent of the club’s under-21 minutes.
| Season | U21 mins |
| 16/17 | 4,116 |
| 17/18* | 884 |
| 18/19* | 1,827 |
| 19/20* | 3,849 |
| 20/21* | 5,886 |
| 21/22 | 3,766 |
| 22/23 | 5,361 |
The data is imperfect, because it doesn’t all depend on Klopp’s willingness to blood young talent. The injury records of first-team players are a key determinant — 20/21 is top largely because a center-back crisis forced Liverpool to turn to academy graduate Rhys Williams and emergency loanee Ozan Kabak — as is the club’s progress in cup competitions.
But what’s most important is that there are multiple success stories brewing at the club right now, even beyond Bajčetić. Harvey Elliott (20) is set to be an important player again this season, Ben Doak (17) has made the club’s Europa League squad at the expense of veteran goalkeeper Adrián (via This is Anfield) and Jarrell Quansah (20) has been promoted into the senior center-back group.
It was initially hoped that Fábio Carvalho would be on that list, and while his loan exit to RB Leipzig just a year after joining from Fulham doesn’t reflect particularly well, Klopp gave him a chance at first before realizing that he wasn’t completely ready for the level. Sepp van den Berg and Williams have also made temporary exits, but neither have proven themselves good enough to play in the Premier League for Liverpool. Loanees that genuinely impress, like Elliott at Blackburn, will be granted opportunities.
