Opinion: Rise Of The Young Bloods At Liverpool

22 and 20, no those are not the weeks lottery numbers, but the age of the two goal scorers for Liverpool in their win against Southampton, another win for the Reds saw them rise above Spurs in the League table and are now just 2 points from getting into the top 4 places, something which was seen as a huge task in November when they were 11 points off Southampton, now they are just 1 point behind the Saints.

Liverpool have been immensely helped by the tweaking of the formation of the team and with a lot of players finding their form at the right time. Brendan Rodgers deserves a lot of credit for the performance of the Reds, a team which was considered to have a leaky defence has now kept 5 clean sheets in a row in away Premier League games, something that they have not been able to do since 1985.

The Reds are on a roll now, they have picked up 23 points from their last 9 League games while they had only picked up 22 points from the first 17 games of the season, as Rodgers lamented at the end of the Southampton game, it is a little upsetting to see the team do well only after November.

Young and they bleed Red

The team has done incredibly well without a lot of the older heads, Steven Gerrard, Lucas Leiva and Glen Johnson have only played peripheral roles since January, alright Lucas Leiva has been exceptional for the Reds, but even his absence through injury has not affected the Reds to that extent as people would have expected, even Joe Allen seems to be doing a good job.

lazar markovic

Liverpool probably have one of the youngest squads in the Premier League, Moreno, Coutinho, Sterling, Ibe, Markovic, Manquillo and Can are all under the age of 22, which means they still have a lot of time to develop and become better. The likes of Moreno, Markovic and Can have been brilliant in the second half of the season while Ibe has looked a Premier League beater since he has been recalled from his loan spell at Derby County.

Not to mention, they have players like Sakho, Lovren, Henderson, Sturridge and Balotelli who are just 25 years of age, so even they have time to grow and develop. Liverpool might be looking at a revamp of the team again in the summer. Steven Gerrard is set to leave, but it seems the likes of Glen Johnson, Jose Enrique and Brad Jones to name a few might leave as well.

That might seem as a big loss but there is a trust in Rodgers that he will get the best out of the team that he has, plus just like the case of Ibe and Sterling, he could promote a few more youngsters into the first team and they could achieve the heights of the current team. Liverpool have missed Jon Flanagan, who has been injured for most of the season. They also have Andre Wisdom on loan at West Brom and Tiago Llori has been brilliant for Bordeaux in Ligue 1, they will also be getting Divock Origi from Lille at the start of next season.

The league title might be a bit too far for this season but a top 4 finish could well be the least the team expects and they could even end the season with some silverware, something to build on for next season for the young guns of Liverpool.