WHEN Rafael Benitez launched into his post-match tirade in Athens about the need to step up to the mark with regard to the courting and signing of top-quality players, he also made several, less well-reported comments about needing to restructure the club from top to bottom.

While it’s been no secret that Rafa, like Houllier before him, was no fan of Steve Heighway’s Academy, the extent of change apparently triggered by Heighway’s departure has been staggering.

Not just in terms of the management of the Academy, with the Dutchman Piet Hamberg brought in to head up technical development, but in the number of young players who have been arriving from around the world like tourists on a Kings Ferry coach holiday.

Scarcely a day has gone by this summer without Liverpool announcing the signing of another young starlet who has just won the Golden Shinpad at the Latvian Under-16 Championships or similar tournament.

Goalkeepers, midfielders and strikers have arrived from places as disparate as Spain (obviously), Germany, Sweden, Hungary, even Bulgaria, apparently destined to learn their trade with the kids at Kirkby, or the men at Melwood.

Now there’s two ways of interpreting this. Either Rafa is building up his own International Peace Force to maintain the uneasy truce between Craig Bellamy and John Arne Riise, or he’s just plain unimpressed with the current batch of youngsters coming through the youth set up and playing for the reserves.

The dearth of young talent forcing their way into the first team squad in recent years has been commented on by many, and the days when the reserve team dominated the Central League year after year are long gone.

The few who have worked their way through the ranks have been swiftly discarded, doomed to ply their trade in the lower leagues or, heaven forbid, in Scotland.

So, has the great Academy experiment been an expensive mistake? Are we failing to find and groom the best of British, or even local, talent?

Heighway, of course, would point to the last two FA Youth Cups in the cabinet as evidence that this isn’t the case, but the fact remains that the envisaged conveyor belt of hungry Scousers knocking on the door of the first team just hasn’t materialised, hence Benitez’s worldwide shopping trip.

It may well be that the talent-spotters and nurturers haven’t been doing their jobs properly or it just might be that tennis isn’t the only British sport where aspiring professionals just aren’t prepared to put the work in to get to the very top of their trade.