Liverpool content to develop young talent elsewhere as they sell promising players

This week, Bobby Clark signed a £10M deal to join Red Bull Salzburg, just as Sepp van den Berg departed for Brentford in a £25M transfer.

Fabio Carvalho also joined Brentford this summer for around £27M whilst Billy Koumetio joined Dundee in the club's sale of young stars. 

Slot has spoken about the club’s decision to sell so many young talents in his recent press conference. 

“That's always a difficult one because young players want to play as well and if they want to develop, they have to play. It's always like this. They come through the ranks of the youth academy and either then you're good enough to play for us many minutes or you're still not there, or there's too much competition in your position. 

“I think still this team, with what we have, have a lot of homegrown players. One of them – Trey Nyoni – is also training with us on a daily basis, but (is) only 17.” 

For Liverpool it is a huge challenge to keep many of the young talent who are desperate to play for the first team but cannot shift senior players out of the way. 

“This club will always bring big good youngsters and it's always a challenge to find the right moment to either play them, or if they played quite a lot of minutes they want to make the next step in their career and if that is not possible because Virgil van Dijk is playing here or Mo Salah is playing here or all the other top players are playing here then it's the best for them and also the club to let them go.  

“You always want to take care of your own interest but you also have a responsibility towards the players and if they want to play somewhere and it is not possible with us, and they're not happy with 500 or 600 minutes because these youngsters didn't play many Premier League games, they played a few games in the cup, then you have to, in my opinion, let them develop somewhere else.”