Phillips didn’t start every game for Stuttgart. But he did play in approximately 50% of the available minutes. He wasn’t recalled early either. He was recalled during the winter break and Jan window to allow him to play in FA Cup.
I’m not necessarily going to push back on your assumption that we haven’t be great at loans. As I’ve said I think the value of loans are quite difficult to quantify in most circumstances.
However, what you said about Phillips above is false. Your original statement that you could only think of 1 successful loan (Awoniyi) recently seems a stretch. IMO you lose some credibility in your opinion if you don’t even get the factual aspects of the matter correct.
Like I said not going to necessarily disagree that the loans have been hit and miss. But a lot more hits than you are suggesting.
I think another thing with loans these days, is there are less been done of players who simply where bad buys or are just not wanted. For a few years, we always seemed to have 2 or 3 quite high profile playres on loan each season, like Markovic, Sakho, Balotelli, Carroll to name a few.
So yeah for that reason alone things have improved with that aspect of loans! I think in the last 5 years or so the changes really have been for the positive. Both in terms of players having decent loans helping the club sell them for a decent fee (Although I think they’ve held onto players a season too long in some cases). But for sure Grujic, Wilson, Kent, Awoyini have all been sold after loans where they where able to play plenty of minutes allowing them to improve and showcase their talents. And seeing Elliott use his loan very positively is good, maybe Sepp will be able to do similar, who knows, but for sure his loan is showcasing his talent.
Loans here have moved on from being too often a way to ‘hide' unwanted players, to being used to actually help players make a step up to Liverpool’s level or at least to give them a huge leg up in advancing their careers.
