Whether Liverpool finish the season winning the quadruple or have to settle for just the League Cup, it has been a good year for the Reds’ academy. 16 players who have come through the club’s ranks have featured for Jurgen Klopp’s side during the current campaign, with seven being handed debuts and two making their first appearances for the German.
Club bosses will be delighted by such a fact and will hope that a handful of them have it in them to follow in Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones’ footsteps and cement their place in the first team in the years ahead. With the highly-rated Kaide Gordon one such youngster to have been handed his debut this year, the early signs are good.
Liverpool haven’t enjoyed such a flurry of talents emerging from their academy since the nineties where Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler opened the door for the likes of Jamie Carragher, Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard to follow. They weren’t the only first-teamers to emerge from the academy at the time though, but while that trio would flourish under the watchful eye of Gerard Houllier, others would depart under the Frenchman having enjoyed less than fruitful relationships with their then-manager.
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David Thompson was one such player. A member of the Reds’ 1996 FA Youth Cup-winning side along with Carragher and Owen, he made his first team debut before the duo, coming on as a substitute against Arsenal when Roy Evans was sole-manager in August 1996.
Loaned to Swindon Town for two and a half months in November 1997, he established himself more in the Liverpool first team following Houllier’s arrival in the summer of 1998. However, he would be sent to train with the kids at the Academy for two weeks in January 1999 after being sent off in a reserve game against Blackburn which resulted in a row with his manager. It would not be the first time his hot-headedness would prove costly at Anfield.
When Fowler was handed a six-game suspension later in the season for his infamous goal celebration against Everton, McManaman was pushed upfront with Thompson handed a run of games on the right-wing as a result. At the time he would insist his time training with the academy had changed him.
"Maybe I was a bit reckless," he admitted. "But my time training at the academy did change me. I had to bite my lip a few times and learn to keep my head down and get on with it."
Houllier made wholesale changes to his squad in the summer of 1999 as the likes of Sami Hyypia, Didi Hamann and Stephane Henchoz were brought in while David James and Paul Ince were sold. Yet Thompson remained at the club and would enjoy his most-successful season at Anfield, making 31 appearances and returning three goals and five assists as the Reds missed out on qualifying for the Champions League.
Yet another dismissal in a reserves game, this time for punching Leeds United's David Hopkin in an off the ball incident in January 2000, would result in another falling-out with Houllier and ultimately pave the way for his Anfield exit that summer.
"If he is a tennis player and argues with the referee or whatever then he is the only one to suffer, but football is a team game and it is the club and his teammates who are suffering from his silly behaviour,” the Frenchman told the Liverpool Daily Post at the time. “At a time when we are competing for Europe we don't need that.
“We need him to be available. We need as many people as possible because we are a little short on personnel. I think players can confuse commitment with a selfish attitude sometimes and if he wants to make it at the top he has got to control himself. I am very angry."
Thompson would return to the Liverpool starting XI before the end of the season but was sold to Coventry City in a £3.5m deal in the summer of 2000. And while Houllier led his former team-mates to a historic treble-win, the midfielder would suffer relegation with the Sky Blues.
He did make an impact on his return to Anfield in November 2000, however, intercepting a misplaced Gerrard pass before skipping past Gary McAllister before thundering home from 30-yards. He would turn and run to celebrate in front of the Kop before swearing in Houllier’s direction, demonstrating that his hot-headedness was very much still present and perhaps why the Frenchman had taken the decision to sell him.
Liverpool had been 2-0 up at the time, thanks to goals from McAllister and Gerrard, before a late Emile Heskey brace sealed a 4-1 win. With time and experience, Thompson would later regret his celebrations, and not just because his goal was in vain, and would apologise to his former manager and make amends long before the Frenchman sadly passed away in December 2020.
“I was petulant,” he recently admitted to the Daily Mail when reflecting on his relationship with Houllier. “Gerard looked after the young lads and would bring us off after 70 minutes. There's me, in my head, thinking the worst player would always come off first. I'd look over and think: "He's doing it again!" I never got my head around the fact he was looking after me.
“I'd have tackled my grandmother to play for Liverpool. Any of us would! I should have taken that on board. I apologised for swearing at him when I scored for Coventry in front of The Kop. I told him I was petulant and immature and he laughed about it. I'm glad I did, for sure.”
Making 56 appearances during his time at Liverpool, it could have been so much more. However, Thompson, who now lives in Gibraltar and serves as Sporting Director of Europa FC, was able to prove his quality post-Anfield before injury ended his career.
Enjoying an impressive season in the First Division with Coventry in 2001/02, he returned to the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers in a £1.5m deal in August 2002, with his early form at Ewood Park even earning him an England call-up. However, he was never the same after a serious knee injury suffered the same season which required surgery, and ultimately forced his retirement at the age of 30 in November 2007.
His time at Blackburn would present another heated exchange with Houllier, however, coming after the Frenchman had sent Markus Babbel on loan to Rovers. In response to the transfer, Thompson would point out, "Once you fall out with the Liverpool manager, you're finished at the club."
This prompted his former manager to reply, quoted by LFC History, "I'm glad David Thompson is not at the club anymore." Ouch! Hopefully the former Liverpool midfielder could laugh about that one too when he did bury the the hatchet with Houllier!
