The evidence that came from much of the analysis from base ball is that all the value comes in the youth system from the top 1% of players - players aften bought when they were half through the youth system like Sterling and Suso. The chances for the average player were so slim and the costs when added to the costs of failures were so high that it wasnt really worth it.
LFC now has a premium youth system whereby the likes of Suso, O'Hanlon. Sterling and Wickham are kean to join but before hand we simply had a bunch of young youths whose chances of making it were super slim and far out weighed by the costs. I still think that with modern technology such as hawk eye and GPS we should know far earlier whether some members of the junior squad are simply not going to make it.