Liverpool Must Press Ahead with Training Centre or Face Being Left Behind Again

"When I come to the training centre by car, it's already very impressive. Not even Bayern can compare with this, it's in a different league." Those were the words of Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan when describing his first arrival at City's impressive Etihad Campus. 

"You can see that you have arrived at a worldwide club that wants big things and wants to develop great things in the next few years," he told German magazine Kicker (h/t FourFourTwo).

First impressions matter.

Especially when an elite footballer is arriving at your club for the first time, perhaps undecided about committing to a move or unsure of the ambitions of the club.

City's £200 million Etihad Campus, directly opposite the City of Manchester Stadium, is one of the most impressive training facilities in world football.

"Top players always want to train at good facilities," explained City right back Pablo Zabaleta on its opening in 2014. "If you want to improve our squad, they are probably going to be big players coming from top teams in Europe. They have to see that City is one of the top clubs in the world. Having these facilities just makes it special."

Covering 80 acres of land in Manchester's Sportcity area, the campus has 16 football pitches, six swimming pools and a 7,000-capacity mini-stadium. It's home to the club's junior, women's and men's teams as well as the club's administration staff and media team. It provides a very impressive place to work for everyone involved in the football club.

According to the Daily Mail's Chris Wheeler, "City studied 70 different facilities across all sports in Europe, the USA and Australia and went through 19 different designs before settling on this one."

It's a process that Liverpool's new sporting director, Michael Edwards, will now begin at Merseyside, with Liverpool preparing plans to merge their first-team and academy training bases—a move that is long overdue for the Reds.

Shortly after Jurgen Klopp signed his new six-year deal at Anfield in the summer, the manager outlined his plans for the long-term future of the club.

"We need to develop the club, we need to develop a lot of things," he told reporters. "We’re thinking about bringing the Academy and Melwood together, things like this."

More recently, Klopp said the merger would be "to get the best circumstances for our first team, under-23s and all these things," per This Is Anfield's Jack Lusby. 

It's a move owners Fenway Sports Group have long been advocates of, with the Americans seeking a "one-club" future, as first revealed by This Is Anfield in 2013 and later discussed by chief executive Ian Ayre, as he explained that the club were undergoing a feasibility study.

Ayre said, per the Liverpool Echo (h/t This Is Anfield): 

"

One of the great things [Everton] have at Finch Farm which we currently don’t have is a situation where you have those young players coming in in the morning, seeing Steven Gerrard turning right while they turn left and hoping one day that they take the same route.

"We make it work—and it is working—but there is definitely more value in having everyone together. And if we can find a solution to that it is absolutely something we would do.

"

Three years later, things seem to have finally progressed and a decision has been made.

Around the same time of Klopp signing his new long-term deal, Liverpool withdrew planning applications for minor alterations to their Melwood training ground, which has been their training base since the 1950s and was initially overhauled by legendary manager Bill Shankly and then modernised under the management of Gerard Houllier at the turn of the century.

But Melwood, set in the residential area of West Derby in Liverpool, is now rather outdated, and the problems of having the first team on a separate site from the club's academy players and staff brings about logistical problems.

When Klopp wants to bring players from the under-23s or under-18s across for training—perhaps for tactical reasons ahead of the next fixture, often to bring them in and get them used to the first-team surroundings—it requires planning ahead, and such decisions are made more difficult on a day-to-day basis. They can't just walk to the pitch on the other side of the complex and may need driving between the two bases, which are currently six miles apart.

Melwood is traditional but perhaps symbolises the struggle Liverpool FC have faced with moving from the past and into the modern era. It features just three full-size pitches, plus an indoor pitch that is extremely outdated at the elite level. 

The media facilities are inadequate, especially in the new era of media where access is provided more than ever and in-house TV channels are on site every day.

There can be no sentimentalism, and it's long overdue that Liverpool create the one site for first team and academy, with facilities that can match their competitors.

Options and Comparisons

Quite simply, Liverpool have two options; Expand their academy base in Kirkby or find a new location and build there.

Kirkby's facilities are, like Melwood's, outdated for the elite level, but there is plenty of land that could be expanded upon.

Expanding Kirkby would probably be more cost-effective, but it does bring about other issues, not least the strong winds that beset the area—something Manchester United had a challenge with after their move from the Cliff training ground to their Carrington Training Centre at the turn of the century.

It was something Louis van Gaal looked to improve shortly after his arrival at the club, with United planting more trees around the training pitches.

Despite the climatic issue, former United boss Sir Alex Ferguson said Carrington was his "best signing." Per the club's official website, he added: "It's given us a training facility where all the players are saying, 'Wow, this is some training ground now'. It's one of the best. And I think if any player were to come here with any doubts about where they should be, they'll soon find out that this is a fantastic setup." 

At City, there's a secluded pitch surrounded by buildings that enables the players to work without being hindered by windy conditions or prying eyes. At Melwood, Liverpool installed a privacy screen in recent years in an attempt to stop the team being leaked.

Again, it shows how far behind Liverpool are.

In 2013, United sold the naming rights in a dual deal with AON, worth a reported £180 million over eight years. The cost of United's training complex was reportedly £60 million—a fraction of City's £200 million City Football Academy.

Liverpool have been linked with investment from the Far East in recent months, per the Financial Times (h/t BBC), and a deal could see a myriad possibilities, from naming rights for the new Main Stand to naming rights for the eventual new training centre once built.

The Reds are said to want £90 million for a 10-year naming rights of Anfield's Main Stand, per the Press Association (h/t This Is Anfield)—a figure that would seemingly cover the cost of a new training complex, whether built new or by expanding at Kirkby.

Tottenham Hotspur are another club to have invested in a new training base in recent years, creating the £70 million Enfield Training Centre that opened in 2012, featuring 15 pitches.

If Liverpool don't invest in this area, they are being left way behind their competitors once again, just as they have been for the past 20 years after failing to solve the stadium issue in the 1990s when others were building new or expanding their current grounds.

Benefits

Back at City, there's the added incentive of seeking to attract the best young talents from around Europe and also the local area. They cite the "dual logic" of "forging stronger links with the local area," which "increases likelihood of talented young Mancunians—and, importantly their parents—opting for City," per SoccerBible magazine.

Such a facility not only impresses the elite first-team players but also the youngsters and their parents, with 450 players training at City's Football Academy each week, from under-sixes to the first team, boys and girls, men and women.

City's under-23s and women's team—who just won the Women's Super League after going unbeaten throughout the 2016 season—both play their games at the 7,000-capacity mini-stadium, further adding to the identity of the club.

Michael Steele/Getty Images

Liverpool's Ladies play outside the city in Widnes at the Select Security Stadium. The Reds' under-23s play most of their home fixtures on the Wirral at Tranmere Rovers' Prenton Park, but some games are also played at Marine FC, while in years past they've used Langtree Park in St Helens. It's all a bit disjointed and not really the one-club vision that owners FSG would prefer.

To have a mini-stadium at the new training complex would be hugely beneficial, and Liverpool supporters will be hoping that once plans are put in place that they include such facilities—not just doing enough to improve but doing enough to impress and rival the likes of City, United and Tottenham.

Speaking about the appointment of Edwards as the club's sporting director, Klopp explained the importance of creating a structure for the club's future, even after he leaves as manager, per the Guardian's Andy Hunter:

"

What we try to create is a structure for LFC. This wonderful club changed philosophy three or four times in the last 10-15 years because different managers came in and say: ‘Let’s do this, let’s change that.’ That’s the English way of doing of things – a new manager comes in and you have to change everything. Football managers get sacked because results are not good but a lot of things around them could have been good. We have tried to create a situation where everything around is perfect. If the manager changes in the future, this club will have a good base.

"

It's the same with the merging of the two training bases, it's about future-proofing the football club and creating a modern base that rivals the main competitors.

Liverpool simply must push forward with the plans to merge Melwood and the academy, and when they do, they must do it properly or face being left behind again.