The Youngsters

[PaulMcC186]

10 minutes ago, Hassony said:

Watched highlights of PSV Vs FC København in the conference league, ended 4-4 but was impressed with Grabara

 

Although I just realized that we let him go rather than loaning him out 

I think he was really highly rated at once stage. A lot more than Kelleher. Mad how things change with young players.

[Jarg Armani]

On 13/03/2022 at 14:54, PaulMcC186 said:

I think he was really highly rated at once stage. A lot more than Kelleher. Mad how things change with young players.

There was a snippet on a podcast about that situation prior to the league cup final. It didn’t say why, but that they were neck and neck for a good while then Kelleher started getting the nod and 1st team training. I think the implication was that Kelleher was Klopp’s pick.

[Atticus Finch]

4 minutes ago, Jarg Armani said:

There was a snippet on a podcast about that situation prior to the league cup final. It didn’t say why, but that they were neck and neck for a good while then Kelleher started getting the nod and 1st team training. I think the implication was that Kelleher was Klopp’s pick.

I think the suggestion is that he was pep's pick, as he had managed that youth team. I think its a stylistic thing - kelleher is unorthodox like alisson. Grabara more orthodox

[PaulMcC186]

4 minutes ago, Jarg Armani said:

There was a snippet on a podcast about that situation prior to the league cup final. It didn’t say why, but that they were neck and neck for a good while then Kelleher started getting the nod and 1st team training. I think the implication was that Kelleher was Klopp’s pick.

I reckon it was his ball playing ability that made them invest more time in him. He's genuinely a good bit better than Alisson with the ball at his feet.

[Ombudsam]

35 minutes ago, PaulMcC186 said:

I reckon it was his ball playing ability that made them invest more time in him. He's genuinely a good bit better than Alisson with the ball at his feet.

Not as good with his head

[Maldini]

10 hours ago, PaulMcC186 said:

I reckon it was his ball playing ability that made them invest more time in him. He's genuinely a good bit better than Alisson with the ball at his feet.

Apparently he had been invited over to England for trials when he was playing up front for his side in Cork.

[Maldini]

Good piece on Adam Pepper from The Athletic

----------------

 

When Adam Pepper was 11 years old, his dad, Ronnie, was the well-known manager of a pub team in Liverpool called Britannia, referred to locally as “The Brit”.

 

They had reached the final of the prestigious FA Sunday Cup for the first time and despite the enormous appetite for football on Merseyside, the opponents, Little Paxton, from a village in Cambridgeshire, had brought a larger following to the game at Villa Park.

 

Pepper, who was always by his dad’s side, remembers the players warming up and there being a lot of, “‘Scouse this, Scouse that’ – it wasn’t nice.”

 

A few of the Brit’s lads were, as Pepper puts it, “handy”. Yet his father told them not to bite. “He said, ‘Don’t say a word. We’ll beat them — then we’ll go over…’”

 

Pepper says he was a good kid at school. His parents were hard on him when it came to manners. The Brit won 2-0 that day and, in the aftermath, Pepper could not resist getting involved, presenting two fingers to the villagers from Little Paxton.

 

When a photograph in the Liverpool Echo showed him at the front of the celebrations the following weekend, a teacher at school said, “Adam, that’s not you… you don’t do that!”

 

“I told him, ‘I was with The Brit, mate. Anything goes…’”

 

That was 20 years ago.

 

Pepper turned 30 in December and today (Sunday), fitness-permitting, he might feature in midfield for Mayfair, a team from the Liverpool Business Houses League, when they face Highgate Albion in the semi-finals of that same competition, back in Birmingham at Solihull Moors’ ground.

 

A few months after the victory over Little Paxton, Pepper’s photo was appearing in national newspapers for different reasons.

 

Nearly all of the major clubs in England were trying to sign him, along with Barcelona and Ajax, and agents were competing with one another in their attempts to impress and therefore represent him.

 

Eric Hall, whose “monster, monster” catchphrase was born out of the amount of money he used to harvest for his clients, suggested Pepper should be insured up to the value of £5 million and with that, he became the most expensive 11-year-old in the world.

 

The next great hope of English football had become a national obsession due to the rise of Wayne Rooney, who was only five years older than Pepper when he scored the goal against Arsenal in 2002 that really launched his career.

 

 

 

Pepper, who was brought up on Scotland Road, a couple of miles closer to Liverpool’s city centre than Goodison Park, where he had a season ticket, took his time before deciding where to go.

 

Though he was an Evertonian, he joined Liverpool at 14, and the club’s confidence in him was reflected by the length of the deal they were offering. At the end of a three-year youth contract, another three years as a professional were waiting for him.

 

As expected, Pepper would captain every side he played for at the academy before training two days a week with the first team at Melwood.

 

It felt like he was going to make it, especially when manager Rafa Benitez, who was notoriously difficult to impress and rarely forthcoming with compliments, asked him whether he’d been born in Spain due to his technical ability.

 

Across the space of just a few months in 2009, however, Pepper’s world was turned upside down.

 

A serious injury was followed by the culling of the academy coaches that knew him best, intercepting any clear path to recovery.

 

Liverpool are a different club today; different owners, a different manager and different staff. Some of those who were abruptly sacked in the summer of 2009 have since returned. Yet then, they were a club in a grave financial crisis and a civil war at ownership level impacted on relationships beneath, as the club lost institutional memory across every significant level.

 

Pepper has never spoken to anyone before about what happened to him. He has not gone out of his way to contest any suggestions that he wasn’t good enough for Liverpool, or for any professional standard, because it has been easier for him to deal with by staying quiet.

 

“People assume, but they don’t know, because I haven’t really told anyone about it — not even members of my family,” he says when we met at a restaurant as the sun sets on the cobblestones of Falkner Street near the centre of Liverpool earlier this week.

 

The experiences between 2009 and 2010, when he was finally released, led to the desire that he thinks defined his rise completely disappearing. Without that, “I wasn’t fit enough to sustain playing at any serious level over a long period of time.”

 

Put bluntly, Pepper did not seek to challenge any perceptions about him because “I didn’t want anyone to talk about me. Instead, I wanted to vanish”.

 

Pepper’s “obsession” with The Brit is explained by his own inactivity.

 

A heart operation at an early age and being an asthma sufferer meant his parents were reluctant to let him compete in a sport. His father’s Sunday team filled a gap until he started playing for the junior club Custy’s, where a girl named Toni Duggan was the best player.

 

Duggan has earned 79 England caps in a career that has taken her to Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. For a long time, it seemed that Pepper was capable of following a similar trajectory.

 

The attention on him aged 11 meant his father, a community sports worker, stopped taking him to games because he’d get pestered by agents and club officials. They would talk to Ronnie during matches when all he wanted to do was focus on his son’s performances.

 

“I want him to wait until he is old enough to cope with the knocks as well as the luxuries that football brings,” he warned reporters in 2002. 

 

“I think agents were spilling the information out,” Pepper says now, 20 years later. “Some of the contracts supposedly on offer were quite big. I didn’t enjoy the attention because I’m quite sensitive. I mean, I wasn’t even playing for a professional club at the time. I was an amateur footballer and my name was all over the papers.”

 

There were so many clubs after Pepper that he was able to dictate how long he spent on trial at each of them.

 

There was a full season of six weeks at a time on the road. Some of his performances led to more opportunities. A hat-trick for Manchester United in a derby led to an offer from neighbours City. Both clubs offered him youth contracts with the guarantee of a long-term professional deal, so did Everton and Liverpool. Chelsea were less keen, offering only a scholarship – which for most kids would have been a sign of intent. For Pepper, it almost felt like a rejection.

 

<

 

At Everton, he remembers asking the scout Sid Benson why training hadn’t started on the pitches of Bellefield. It was a measure of Rooney’s reputation that the first team would wait for him to finish his school lessons.

 

When Pepper went to United, he was introduced to David Beckham and Ryan Giggs, who gave him a pair of boots.

 

Liverpool’s special treatment came via a phone call from Kenny Dalglish. “I didn’t know who he was when he called the house. He said, ‘Adam, it’s Kenny Dalglish… Is your dad there?’ So, I shouted up and my dad was like, ‘Yeah, right… Kenny Dalglish…’”

 

When Ajax heard he’d decided to join Liverpool, the Dutch giants asked if he would delay the decision to allow them the chance to impress him. Liverpool, however, was where he really wanted to be because of the standard of the coaching and the atmosphere. “Hughie McAuley, Dave Shannon and Steve Heighway made me feel good. I also loved the way Steven Gerrard played football. I felt like I could really kick on there.”

 

His understanding of football through his experiences of being around the men of The Brit, along with a background in boxing at the city’s famous Rotunda club, helped him adjust to the new environment. Liverpool, so keen to sign him, even allowed him to continue to compete in fights for a year into his contract at the academy.

 

Pepper’s name was already established among those who knew anything about junior football in Liverpool by the time he finally signed a contract.

 

From afar, he was viewed as a supremely talented, technical player but he says he was never naturally gifted. He was small and had to work hard to stand out. This ethic came from his dad, who always travelled to games in possession of a checklist of the basic things he must do. Over time, Ronnie kept adding to the list, which meant it was never completed and his son never felt satisfied.

 

Pepper says the side of the game he enjoyed the most was tackling, because he’d learned from The Brit how a juicy one could alter the mood on a football pitch. He remembers Gerrard launching into Phil Jagielka twice in the matter of a few seconds in one Merseyside derby and, “the crowd went mad. I loved seeing the reaction – it helped get Liverpool on the front foot”.

 

In one game against Blackburn Rovers, Pepper remembers slowing down to win a challenge of his own. He considered it to be hard but fair – “like the way The Brit used to do it” – prompting his dad on the touchline to nod with satisfaction.

 

Yet Liverpool’s coaches knew exactly what was happening. Heighway, the academy director, told Pepper he needed to stop trying to hurt opponents because he’d end up hurting himself. Heighway also told him he would not play again for Liverpool until he’d learned his lesson, but the following game he was still in the starting XI.

 

Heighway, he thinks, was trying to show him that his ability was already beyond many of the players he was facing, along with some of the team-mates he was swearing at – something he only ever did on the pitch for dramatic effect. Again, such behaviour was something that came from The Brit. “At home, I’d be in trouble for the way I spoke on the pitch. I saw being loud and aggressive as a way of gaining an advantage.”

 

A year or so later, when he flattened Sunderland’s much-talked-about forward Martyn Waghorn in a Youth Cup match, Heighway did not complain. Waghorn seemed like he was double Pepper’s size. Clearly, his instincts needed harnessing but there was a time and a place for aggression, after all. Liverpool lost that tie and after the team received a dressing down, Heighway turned to Pepper – the youngest player in the squad – and said, “Well done…”

 

 

Martyn Waghorn, playing for Coventry City this season (Photo: Bradley Collyer/PA Images via Getty Images)

Pepper used to watch Liverpool first-team games and shake his head at some of the performances by Lucas Leiva, who – for a time – was an unpopular figure on the terraces of Anfield.

 

He says he began to understand more about the standards at Liverpool when he played beside the Brazilian midfielder in a behind closed doors friendly.

 

“He was well behind Gerrard and (Xabi) Alonso but he was unbelievable. I went back to the academy the next day and said, ‘Lads, Lucas is a lot better than we all think’. I remember thinking, ‘s***, I’ve got a lot of progression to make here’.”

 

It felt like it was set up for Pepper to play in midfield for Liverpool’s Youth Cup team with Sean Highdale before his team-mate was involved in the car crash that ended his professional career in 2008.

 

It was the first reminder of how quickly a life can change.

 

Twelve months later, the club’s under-18s were on the verge of a third final in four seasons when Pepper heard something pop having tried to control an easy pass in the final minutes of a semi-final second-leg victory over Birmingham City.

 

Pepper had ignored some old advice to play that day, the month after he’d scored spectacularly against Blackburn from the halfway line. After training with the first team following the first leg against Birmingham, he came down with flu. Steve Hill, a coach with local club Allerton Juniors, had told him upon signing for Liverpool to never play with an illness because it could lead to someone with significant influence forming the wrong impression about his abilities.

 

But Pepper knew Benitez was in the crowd against Birmingham, who Liverpool were already leading by three goals going into that second leg. The tie was done but Pepper saw an opportunity to impress under the lights at Anfield, so he made himself available.

 

Nobody was near him when he fell to the ground and stayed there for longer than 10 minutes. He had never experienced so much pain in his life. At the back of his mind, he remembered a message from his father — ‘Never, ever, leave a pitch on a stretcher. Always walk off. Show them you can deal with it’. His abductor muscle had torn away from his pelvis. Yet still, he walked off.

 

In the changing rooms, his stomach swelled up. It became apparent very quickly that he would not be able to feature against Arsenal in the two-legged final.

 

For a week, he was consigned to a wheelchair because he could not stand up straight. While his team-mates prepared for the first leg of the final, he was also in London, seeing a specialist who told him this was always going to happen because his body was out of proportion. That was when the specialist also told him the devastating news he might struggle to hold down a career in professional football.

 

 

Inspired by Jack Wilshere, left, Arsenal celebrate winning the FA Youth Cup against Liverpool in 2009 (Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Pepper could not believe what he was hearing. Back at the team hotel, coaches Shannon and McAuley reassured him of how highly they valued him, reminding him he still had three years left to run on his contract.

 

The specialist had also said that with the right care, the injury could be managed. “I was thinking, ‘I’m at the best place because the club will know what to do…’”

 

These conversations made him feel better. Without him, Liverpool lost the final to a Jack Wilshere-inspired Arsenal and after the second leg, there was more bad news. After reporting to the academy, he saw Shannon crying in the corner of the gym. In the changing rooms, McAuley was upset. He was closest to Shannon so went back to him, where he could hear him talking to his wife. Liverpool’s old guard had been sacked. “I couldn’t believe it. Everything we knew about the club was because of them.”

 

Heighway had left the club two years earlier because of disagreements with Benitez, who wanted full control — including of the academy.

 

Despite producing three teams worthy of reaching the Youth Cup final in his first four seasons in charge, Benitez felt the players coming through the system were not good enough for the first team. A new five-year contract, awarded to him by Tom Hicks amid his power struggle with co-owner George Gillett as Liverpool’s financial state worsened, gave him more power.

 

Pepper had thought Benitez rated him. When he trained at Melwood, he felt he had the support of the senior players, which was always a good sign for any young player. Yet he also knew a large part of his recovery would be spent at the academy, albeit — in theory — working with new staff, keen to throw their weight about and unfamiliar with all of his circumstances.

 

A few days before the start of pre-season training, Pepper was asked to report to Melwood where a new physio made positive noises about his injury. Soon, though, conversations turned to paying up his contract.

 

In less than four months, Pepper had gone from being one of Liverpool’s next great hopes to suffering a serious injury after an unprecedented coaching cull during a bitter civil war.

 

The new coaches, he was told, felt it was simply time to go their separate ways. Pepper initially backed himself to prove them wrong. Yet he felt attitudes towards him shifted under a new regime, where nobody knew who to trust.

 

“I got blanked by a few people I thought I knew,” Pepper says. “I thought I’d be able to show them, and I told them. But this attitude seemed to count against me. They did not want me to show them. They just didn’t want me.”

 

 

Birmingham City’s Mitchell McPike and Liverpool’s Adam Pepper (Photo: Nigel French – PA Images via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, he was hiding the situation from everyone who cared about him.

 

He felt like he had to protect his family because he did not want them to feel like he did, or to worry about money. Partly out of embarrassment due to the hopes placed upon him all those years before, he did not want to admit to anyone that the club he now loved did not want him anymore. The new coaches did not have a relationship with any of the parents and this made it easier to keep his position a secret. All of this made him feel like he was living a lie.

 

Within six or seven months, he was running and kicking a ball again — but not as far as he could before. At the age of 18, he was told to train with the 14-year olds by one of the new coaches, who had mistaken his name for another player when they were first introduced to one another. Pepper decided to try to keep his head down and do everything that was asked of him but the more he complied with those wishes, even if he thought they were unreasonable, the more he felt it annoyed them.

 

“To this day, I honestly couldn’t tell you why it happened,” he says. “I wasn’t a bad egg. I had a good attitude and I wanted to do well. I was desperate to play for Liverpool. If I came back from injury and I wasn’t the same player, I’d understand it. But they were willing to offer a pay-out. Why not just let me see my contract out and see if I can get back to where I was?”

 

There was a glimmer of hope when he was added to the squad for an under-18s game due to injuries to other players.

 

Coming on as a substitute, Pepper scored a free kick and Liverpool ended up beating Manchester United having been behind.

 

It felt like he was back, but nothing changed. The club offered him the chance to join Wigan Athletic and West Bromwich Albion on loan but he turned down both.

 

By this point, he was dreading the start of every day. Sometimes, he’d leave for work in the morning and stop the car before he’d arrived at the academy.

 

When he realised he could not continue the journey, he decided to stop fighting.

 

In the summer of 2010, as Benitez was sacked and, with two years left on Pepper’s contract, his own time at Liverpool also came to an end. 

 

Being one of the club’s brightest prospects had brought new friends into his life. He considered turning his phone off because he didn’t have an explanation for the lots of people who would be getting in touch trying to find out what had happened. Instead, he left it on… and nobody called. “I wasn’t at one of the biggest clubs in the world anymore,” he concluded.

 

Pepper would fill a bit of the space reading the online forums dedicated to Liverpool. He’d type his name in and see comments from anonymous people suggesting he had a bad attitude. “It made me think, ‘I wish you knew the truth…’”

 

The thought of joining another club scared him, because nobody really understood his circumstances. He had barely played in a year. That turned into him staying in bed for what seemed like every single day for six months. He was never a drinker but he started, also deciding to give away all of his football possessions, including the match balls that signified some of his best performances in a Liverpool shirt.

 

Pepper says he has never spoken openly to anyone about his darkest thoughts during this period.

 

 

Pepper (bottom row, centre) playing for Mayfair

“I didn’t do any GCSEs (exams) because I was training with Liverpool every day at 16. It seemed like there was no future. I’ll admit, I didn’t want to live anymore.”

 

After a short spell playing for Aberystwyth Town in the Welsh Premier Division he went on trial to Stockport County, where he came clean with the club’s new owner for “blagging” him because he knew he still wasn’t able to train properly.

 

Pepper realised he needed to get away. So he went to live in Jersey with an uncle he’d only met on a handful of occasions, “Where no one knew who I was or could ask me questions when I was out on a night out like, ‘What happened to you?’ It was never asked in a concerned way.”

 

He thinks Jersey, where he lived for a year, saved him. His uncle ran a painting and decorating firm and he started playing for a Sunday League team there. He became more confident and his social skills returned.

 

“When I left Liverpool for Jersey, I was a shell of a person. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, even at a bar. I would have stayed there forever but I couldn’t wait to get back to Liverpool and show everyone how I’d changed.”

 

Stalybridge Celtic, the non-League club on the eastern outskirts of Manchester Pepper played for upon his return from the Channel Islands, still have a profile on their website which describes him as a scorer of “wonderful goals” and “one of the most technically gifted players to ever don a Celtic shirt”.

 

That spell lasted two years before he moved on to Nantwich Town in Cheshire, where he was asked whether he’d like to join neighbours Crewe Alexandra for pre-season training after impressing in a friendly match. His answer was emphatically no. “And don’t ask me again.” By 2014, he concluded his body wasn’t equipped to earn a contract at Crewe even if he remained talented enough.

 

An entry into the hugely competitive amateur scene in Liverpool came initially through an invitation to play five-a-side football by one of the Smith brothers — a famous boxing dynasty in the city.

 

“It still takes me a few days to recover from every match,” Pepper explains. “On a Monday morning, I struggle to get out of bed and my girlfriend asks, ‘Why do you do it?’ I frustrate a lot of lads who I play with. They say, ‘When you want to turn it on, you do — but sometimes you don’t look arsed…’”

 

He says motivation comes when he thinks about what it means for other people rather than himself. Men like Mayfair’s managers Gavin and Dean put their heart and soul into the running of the club, along with some of the lads on the line like “Statto” — who has become the team’s chief scout due to his unparalleled knowledge of the Liverpool scene.

 

Pepper was self-employed when he sustained an ankle injury in a Sunday Cup match a few years ago, which meant he couldn’t work. Now, as a full-time electrician on the city’s railway lines, he is more careful on the pitch than he’s ever been, so he takes decisions around availability seriously. As of Tuesday night, he was unsure whether he’d be fit enough to start ahead of Mayfair’s trip today to the area where his father’s Britannia team captured amateur football’s holy grail two decades ago.

 

For him, The Brit had been “the pinnacle”, but his own career meant his dad had to switch focus.

 

Things were never the same again and, a couple of years later, the team split up.

 

“I was sobbing, thinking it was my fault,” Pepper says. “They were a massive family to me but everyone went their separate ways.

 

“It was the first time I realised how fickle footy can be. You can lose everything very quickly.”

[Leo No.8]

It’s a familiar story, shame for him. Remember his name being talked about.

Played against The Brit a few times, always knew you were in for a fight at their place.

[muleskinner]

 

[Cobs]

12 minutes ago, muleskinner said:

 

he's my favourite player

[PaulMcC186]

He's looked good for Celtic's first team.

[Jarg Armani]

Had a teacher called Mrs Doak in primary school. She was a top catholic, as I am assuming this lad is.

[Cobs]

28 minutes ago, Jarg Armani said:

Had a teacher called Mrs Doak in primary school. She was a top catholic, as I am assuming this lad is.

like some sort of Cardinal ?

 

and how do you pronounce Doak ? Is it 'Do-ack' or 'Doke' or something else? Need to get it right for the 'running down the wing' song

[Earl Hafler]

How small is he ?!

[Billy Talbot]

2 minutes ago, Earl Hafler said:

How small is he ?!

I thought he was doing that thing where you put your knees in your shoes, but I think he has false legs. 

[cymrococh]

8 minutes ago, Earl Hafler said:

How small is he ?!

He’s only seven bless him

[Cam]

3 hours ago, muleskinner said:

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Doak?
 

Surprise m***** f*****. 
 

 

[Maldini]

3 hours ago, Cobs said:

like some sort of Cardinal ?

 

and how do you pronounce Doak ? Is it 'Do-ack' or 'Doke' or something else? Need to get it right for the 'running down the wing' song

Kwee-doke

[The Hitman]

Dr Doak. Goldeneye

[Tones]

Scored a hat trick for scotland under 17s today. Or maybe not today, just seen the vids on Twitter tonight. Thought i read he was a full back?

Edited March 31, 2022 by Tones

[D.Boon]

It's going to take all the forums skill and verve to come up with a selection of piss poor songs using that name.

 

[Cam]

38 minutes ago, D.Boon said:

It's going to take all the forums skill and verve to come up with a selection of piss poor songs using that name.

 

Benny, are you doak-y? 

So, Benny, are you doak-y?

Are you doak-y, Benny?

Will you tell us that you're doak-y?

[Jarg Armani]

15 hours ago, Cobs said:

like some sort of Cardinal ?

 

and how do you pronounce Doak ? Is it 'Do-ack' or 'Doke' or something else? Need to get it right for the 'running down the wing' song

This lad seems to actually run down the wing. The algorithm might break.

[Maldini]

We're all going to be doing the Doaky Doaky. In out in out, shake it all about.