Exactly the sort of deal we should be pursuing. Worst case scenario - you flog them for a small profit
Well no, not quite. Worst case scenario is that he's a complete flop, we end up loaning him out until the end of his contract because no-one wants to take another punt on him, and in the meantime other promising youngsters look at us and go 'Well it didn't go great for him! I might go the tried and tested Dortmund/Red Bull route'
I agree it'd be nice to sign a few Caicedo/Bellinghams and see them develop here instead of somewhere else, but it really isn't this guaranteed home run that people seem to think it is. The reason most of our major successes are players of a certain age is because we sign them when there's plenty of data. Thats why we're so good at it, its not that we have a load of psychic scouts who just happen to spot the next Messi at 14 but we have a very, very good system data-wise. You sign 18 year olds the amount of data there is obviously drastically decreases, so the risk is a lot higher.
I'm sure this is something you can relate to, but I'll guarantee if we started dropping fairly big money on unproved 18/19 year olds and a couple of them flopped there'd be knives out saying we should have stuck with what worked for us and FSG are scraping the barrel relying on Klopp turning kids into megastars.
Hopefully FSG looking at buying other clubs and having our own 'network' isn't just media talk, because that really would help with the transition if we could get a couple of decent European sides who we could 'try them out' at first (particularly with the new rules after Brexit not allowing us to sign U18s from abroad). As much as its frowned upon and its not great morally.....if our rivals are doing it we're probably missing out by not doing the same.