Article courtesy of Elliot Tunstall at the excellent Live4Liverpool
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There has been talk in the past day or two that one of our highly-rated youngsters, Dani Pacheco, has had enough of his bit-part role in the Liverpool squad and wants to call it a day at Anfield with a move elsewhere his favoured option. Not only is Pacheco one of the most exciting prospects at Liverpool, he is regarded as a potential European superstar. Typically, and an emerging pattern that represents Liverpool Football Club in the past decade, a highly-rated youngster is not being nurtured enough to fulfil his potential and, inevitably, is being sold on with an unhappiness at lack of first team opportunities.
Admittedly, as a spectator for this particular game, Pacheco’s last performance in a red shirt, against Northampton Town in that disastrous third round League Cup defeat, was a disappointing effort to say the least and did nothing to suggest that the Spaniard would hit the dizzy heights that he is being tipped to reach. However, for me, the few appearances he has made for the first team at Liverpool he has been positioned out on the wing, a position I do not believe Roy Hodgson will get the best out of the youngster. Dani has excelled in an attacking position, often just behind the striker, for Spain’s youth ranks and also for our own reserve team; culminating in Pacheco being the star player at the recent European Under-19 Championships. Therefore, to ask him to step up to the big time of first team football in an unfamiliar position is surely too much to ask of a player just starting out in his career.
If the rumours are true and Pacheco decides enough is enough and calls time on a Liverpool career that hasn’t really got going then there will be a host of top European clubs queuing up to take the talented Spaniard off our hands. Ex-manager Rafa Benitez pulled off a major transfer cup to take Pacheco from the famous Barcelona youth system and to waste those efforts would be criminal. The boy has talent but has yet to be given a proper chance to show it and has every right to feel aggrieved at Roy Hodgson’s ignorance.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Give Pacheco a chance. Give him a run in the first team. It is not as though our attacking players’ current performances are of any great standard and they certainly aren’t immovable and are not proving to anybody that there is no room for experimenting with our talented youngsters. Roy Hodgson is walking a very narrow tightrope at the moment in terms of the safety of his job so a player like Pacheco could be a saviour for our under pressure boss. A couple of big performances from the Spaniard would earn the manager praise for bravery and it will not harm him to try out a player that evidently has the ability, he just needs to be given the perfect platform to show it off.
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