Alan Hansen, one of Kenny Dalglish’s firmest friends, will never be allowed to forget his infamous insistence that you never win anything with kids. Serves him right. Apart from titles, kids can also win you friends. In Liverpool’s situation, they need all the friends they can get.

The club is being parodied as a faded beauty who puts her make-up on with a trowel. The manager is in denial about the significance of the disparity between Liverpool’s performances in the league and in cup competition. The fans do not know whether to laugh or cry.

Dalglish is at bay. Human nature being what it is, the media are taking revenge for his sourness under pressure. His legend is sagging under the weight of criticism. He would gouge out his own eyes with a rusty spoon before admitting it publicly, but he needs a quick win, a good news story.

A Champions League place is gone. A Europa League place is assured. His best option is to concentrate on a two-game season in the FA Cup, and to introduce the next generation in the remaining Premier League games. Liverpool need the endorphins released by the successful birth of a new star.

This is where Raheem Sterling (pictured) comes in. His debut, as substitute, was the only redeeming factor in that grotesque home defeat by Wigan. Dalglish made all the right noises about protecting his potential, but he should give him a run in the side as a matter of priority.

Sure, he’s only 17. But, apart from a game against Chelsea, Liverpool’s run-in is relatively undemanding. Opportunity knocks. This is Liverpool’s chance to drown out the noise from what looks like a concerted campaign to unsettle Sterling. A series of articles, using unattributed sources to cite his supposed impatience, has led to speculation about interest from the likes of Spurs.

I’m told Sterling, and Jordan Ibe, the 16-year-old winger recruited from Wycombe, have impressed Dalglish immensely. Jon Flanagan is mirroring the steady progress of Martin Kelly. On the downside, other much-vaunted prospects such as defender Andre Wisdom, midfield player Conor Coady and striker Nathan Eccleston, have been less convincing.

Kids may be imperfect and unpredictable, but they buy you time.

David Luiz is difficult to dislike. He plays with a smile on his face and possesses the energy of a hyperactive puppy. But can Chelsea trust him, when their season is on the line? Will the emotional release of tonight’s return to Lisbon overwhelm him?

No one knows, least of all Roberto Di Matteo, who faces one of the biggest decisions of his Chelsea career. The safe option would be to retain the central defensive partnership of John Terry and Gary Cahill against Benfica. The gambler’s choice would give Luiz the opportunity to excel in the familiar surroundings of the Estadio da Luz.

It is a question of mentality. British bulldog or PlayStation footballer. Aggression or self-expression. Stick to basics, or cry freedom. At stake for Chelsea is what goalkeeper Peter Cech refers to as a “lost season” without Champions League football.

Luiz remains hugely popular at Benfica. English observers may have taken stories of Barcelona’s interest in him with a lorry load of salt, but in Portugal a £35million move to the Camp Nou, from Chelsea, made perfect sense.

Sure, he’s a maverick. He makes mistakes. His approach is anathema to those coaches who preach defensive discipline. But in a way Luiz is made for Barca, who defend as a last resort. They’re a team of eleven cavaliers. Chelsea have fallen back on the familiar virtues of their roundheads.

The Portuguese influence at Stamford Bridge has waned. Paulo Ferreira litters the margins of the first-team squad, like a discarded crisp packet. Luiz could not do worse at right back than Jose Bosingwa, the only other Portuguese survivor.

I’d love to see Luiz given a run in midfield, which would be fun while it lasted. You don’t need to check his passport to see that he is Brazilian. He is a slave to his instincts but technically superb. Is he at the right club, or even in the right country?

We might just be about to find out.

Regicide tends to be a messy business. Betrayal leads to blood on the carpet and triggers feuds that can fester for years. Kings are rarely dispatched quietly, yet at Manchester United the fatal blow will be applied with the minimum of fuss.

Dimitar Berbatov is a little too regal for some tastes at Manchester United. He is the sort of footballer who plays as if he has man servants to do the heavy lifting. In an age of Pro-zoned pedal pushers, he is a law unto himself. That, ultimately, is unacceptable.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King (Javier Hernandez, if you were wondering).

United’s gesture, in taking up the one-year option on Berbatov’s existing contract, is more of an insurance policy than a gesture of faith. It will protect a modicum of his re-sale value when he leaves Old Trafford, most probably for the Bundesliga, in the summer transfer window.

Sir Alex Ferguson accepts the inevitability of his departure, and Emil Danchev, Berbatov’s agent, has been getting busy on behalf of a man he refers to as Mitko, his Bulgarian nickname. He claims his client is embarrassed to be taking money under false pretences, and his comparison with Carlos Tevez was both timely and telling.

“It is not Mitko’s style to start making scandals,” said Danchev, who, in addition to calculating the percentages, evidently has a decent grasp of what makes a red-top headline. It was an obvious ploy, designed to generate sympathy and respect while alerting the world to the striker’s availability, but somehow endearing.

That’s the problem with Berbatov. He’s a guilty secret, like the slab of chocolate you hide at the back of the fridge. I know he is languid to the point of indolence, but, Goddam it, he has style. He’s also not been the disappointment at United that some would have you believe.

He has scored 49 goals in 82 Premier League appearances for United. That is consistent with his strike rate at Bayer Leverkusen, and better than his record at Spurs which, lest we forget, prompted Ferguson to spend more than £30million.

The logic, that he is ill-suited to a new United team, based on pace and youth, is inescapable. But logic is cold, and rarely fulfilling. I’ll miss Berbatov, and suspect I will not be alone.

Queens Park Rangers have given themselves a fighting chance of avoiding relegation from the Premier League. They barely deserve the opportunity and are set for a summer of strife, whatever their fate. But, for the short term at least, they are all in it together.

Teams riven by cliques and splintered by personality clashes are football roadkill. Players with planetary egos and unlimited reserves of self-regard are pure poison. QPR are in danger of becoming the former, and cannot afford the latter.

That, of course, brings us to Joey Barton, the renegade Ranger. He is a malign influence that QPR must address. Indulge him, excuse his outbursts and overlook his shortcomings as a self-proclaimed star, and they might as well start planning for the Championship.

It takes a genius in the dark arts to turn something as positive as QPR’s miraculous comeback against Liverpool into a negative, but Barton managed it with ease. He began by criticising the fans who jeered him, when he was understandably substituted.

It was a typically palsied performance, sluggish and lacking in class and creativity. Yet he duly entered the realms of self-parody by going on Twitter to misquote If, Rudyard Kipling’s inspirational poem: “If you were a man, my son, you’d shut up and get on with your job.”

You’d match the passion of a proper pro, like the ageless Sean Derry. You’d emulate the enthusiasm of Djibril Cissé. You’d learn from Jamie Mackie, who channelled the frustration of being on the bench into the season’s most unlikely winner.

QPR may be two points clear of the relegation zone, but they face the run in from hell. They need to find a collective will, and a sense of solidarity, starting with tomorrow’s trip to Sunderland.

Mark Hughes, who has yet to convince at Loftus Road, has the perfect opportunity to show he means business. Drop Barton. Tell him he is free to move, if anyone is foolish enough to match his £80,000 a week wages.

Otherwise Rangers fans will be looking up bus timetables to Barnsley and Burnley.

Liverpool 0 Ajax 6. It was a startling scoreline, a stellar performance which resonated far beyond its setting, Langtree Park, a gleaming new rugby league ground in St Helens. It offered a glimpse into the future which should chill English football to the marrow.

The ritual humiliation of the most prized products of Liverpool’s academy came in the semi-final of the NextGen series, a Champions League for Under-19s. Blink, and you would have missed it. The public prints, chat rooms and phone-ins were concentrating on Chelsea’s heroics, and Steven Gerrard’s claim to the England captaincy.

Same old, same old.

Yet if English football stopped concentrating on its collective navel for a nanosecond, it would realise the significance of Liverpool’s embarrassment. The Anfield academy is popularly portrayed as the only positive legacy of Rafa Benitez’s reign.

It is stocked with local talent, like England Under-19 captain Conor Coady (pictured), and imports from around the globe. Raheem Sterling and Michael Ngoo, recruited from QPR and Southend respectively, suffered the same fate as Suso, a Spanish midfield prodigy in whom so much has been invested.

Ajax stuck to their traditions, the patterns of play established in the 1970s by Cruyff and co. They were fluid, inventive. Their movement was sinuous, intelligent. Liverpool’s youngsters simply couldn’t cope with their pace, athleticism and the accuracy of their finishing.

It was beautiful, yet barbaric. Until Ajax declared, with 20 minutes to go, I was convinced they were going to hit double figures. The legions of scouts, clustered in the main stand, scribbled furiously.

Already Viktor Fischer, scorer of a hat-rick of rare quality, is being touted as part of a £23million package, which would also take fellow Dane Christian Eriksen to Manchester United. He is 17, an avenging angel who swoops inside from an exaggerated position, wide on the left.

Captain Davy Klaassen, who played for the Ajax first team at Old Trafford last month, and central defender Stefano Denswil also excelled. Ronald de Boer, whose younger twin brother Frank manages Ajax’s senior side, admitted afterwards that the club “are on the verge of something special”.

He accepted that they will remain a selling club, because of the relative weakness of the Dutch Eredivisie, but had a warning for the self-regarding plutocrats of the Premier League.

Ajax’s Under-17s are even better.

The politics of Liverpool Football Club and the passions they arouse are dark, deep and daunting for outsiders. It still came as a shock, though, to discover a ‘Kenny Out’ campaign defacing the internet on the eve of the Merseyside derby. That’s heresy on an historic scale.

A peasants’ revolt against King Kenny? In a season that has delivered silverware? Some mistake surely, to use the immortal catchphrase of a legendary editor of mine. They don’t do such things at Liverpool, do they? Solidarity, towards their own, rather than such outsiders as Roy Hodgson, tends to be taken for granted, like the anthemic splendour of the Kop.

But when dissent begins to surface at such a sensitive time – Everton will cross Stanley Park tonight with an appreciable sense of destiny – it is time to suspend disbelief. The questions, raised about the nature of Liverpool’s development under Kenny Dalglish, are growing in volume, and demand answers.

This is precisely the scenario Dalglish’s friends feared when he became consumed by the challenge of returning to a club whose core beliefs resonate so clearly with his own. Wembley offered some respite, but if Everton mark the 10th anniversary of David Moyes’ management with a win at Anfield the fall-out will be spectacular.

Liverpool’s haphazard transfer strategy is a recurring theme. Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing are often cited as the most conspicuous failures in recruitment, but I see no reason to look beyond Charlie Adam. The reputation, acquired during a stellar season with Blackpool, is in tatters.

He was, apparently, signed on the strength of his statistics. These tend to be as reliable as a con man’s promise. They are insufficiently specific, and give no indication of the context in which they were accumulated. Blackpool played to, and through, Adam. At Liverpool there are better players, better options.

There are also bigger issues. Luis Suarez is starting to look like a transfer saga waiting to happen. Jordan Henderson will require time, a prohibitively expensive luxury in modern football. Jamie Carragher’s legend offers little protection when he appears to be playing from memory.

I’m told the ‘Kenny Out’ campaign is being run by, and for, the younger element of the Liverpool fan base. It’s nonsense, of course, but a taste of things to come.

It is the goalkeepers’ union cup final at the Emirates tonight. For Arsenal against Newcastle, read Wojciech Szczesny against Tim Krul. Each believes he is the best. Both possess the manic energy of a puppy that has been cooped up in a car for too long. It won’t be quiet.

In goalkeeping terms, they are barely house trained. Szczesny, at 21, has solved Arsenal’s problem position, and is already being spoken of in the same breath as David Seaman. Krul, two years older and, at 6ft 4in, an inch shorter, is finally filling the void left at Newcastle by the equally celebrated Shay Given.

The nature of their role means their mistakes are magnified, and their apprenticeship is demanding. Arsenal allowed Szczesny to learn on the job at Brentford. Krul left Newcastle for spells at Falkirk and Carlisle. Goalkeepers require mental strength, physical dexterity, and an assertive character. Each doesn’t mind the sound of his own voice, which helps.

Szczesny, whose father Maciej is a former Polish international goalkeeper, trained as a ballroom dancer, not the easiest pastime to defend in the cut and thrust of dressing room debate. He and Krul enjoy getting their hands dirty in the scrum of a post-match media zone.

They’ve each had fun with Chelsea’s latest crisis, mocking the “English boys” who are allowed to believe they run the place. Szczesny widened his arc of attack to include Spurs, which always goes down well in the red half of north London. Their media friendliness will offer some protection against extreme criticism, but not much.

Krul has the more efficient defence to organise, even though it has been disrupted by a long-term injury to Steven Taylor. Szczesny has found himself trying to keep Arsenal’s ever-changing back line in order, which is a little like attempting to herd goldfish. Who is the best? To an extent that depends on your view of goalkeeping.

Szczesny is this generation’s answer to Peter Schmeichel, loud and physically intimidating. Krul is a more continental-type of keeper, a shot-stopper blessed with lightning reflexes and barely believable elasticity. On current form, both have a shot at the PFA’s Young Player of the Year award.

The goalkeepers’ union would be pleased, should either win that.

The names are interchangeable and the outcome tends to be universally dispiriting. Chelsea have signed Luca Savelloni, the Italy Under-17 goalkeeper, for £1.7million from Pescara. That’s loose change for an academy that has swallowed upwards of £70million with little apparent impact.

As every Chelsea fan knows, John Terry is the last homegrown player to become a first-team regular. The “Captain, Leader, Legend” banner at Stamford Bridge, which testifies to the cult of his personality, cannot conceal the cracks in the façade of the club’s long-term strategy.

Without wishing to put too fine a point on it, Chelsea’s recruitment policy is an expensive version of throwing mud at a wall, to see what sticks. Legions of youngsters, usually foreign, have been ushered into the Cobham training complex with great fanfare, only to be discarded with muted thanks for their efforts.

Some deals invite the suspicion they are little more than feelgood stories. Take the Dasilva brothers. Chelsea did, from Luton Town’s Centre of Excellence. Rio and Cole are 12. Jay is 13. Each cost a “five-figure sum”. Luton, who have a vested interest in talking things up, suggest the deal could eventually be worth £1million. The lads might have great footballer’s names, but will they make it? It is long odds against.

All transfers are a gamble. When they involve boys with developing bodies and characters they are an imprecise form of human engineering. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with scouts recently, and have seen Chelsea at youth and reserve-team level. I’ve yet to meet anyone who is convinced the club’s principal prospects will make it into the first team.

Lucas Piazon (pictured above) arrived from Brazil with a big reputation and a big basic fee, £4million. He has good technique, and a range of tricks and flicks, but would be eaten alive by Premier League defenders. Nat Chalobah, a languid central defender born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, has the best chance of making himself a career. He was a fixture in the England Under-17 team from the age of 14.

Should this bother the next Chelsea manager, whoever he may be? Not really, because he is unlikely to be around long enough to benefit from the boy who gets the breaks. It is the boys who are broken by the system we should worry about.

Perspective, when you answer to the nickname ‘God’, can be problematic. But, in the case of Robbie Fowler, it comes with unlikely challenges, fresh faces, and trials on the sort of insanitary training grounds which double as a pet’s playground. He refuses the easy option, of living on his legend at Liverpool.

Fowler has decided not to join Blackpool, with whom he trained until yesterday, but is being courted by their Championship rivals, Hull, Doncaster Rovers and Burnley. The former Liverpool striker doesn’t need the money, but, as he approaches his 37th birthday, he is drawn by the sense of belonging which every professional athlete misses in the twilight world of retirement.

His options remain open. He still wants to savour the acid wit of the dressing room, the testosterone tonic of unfulfilled ambition. He knows he will be mocked as an Anfield museum piece, as sad a refugee from the 90s as the mercifully forgettable pop icons Boyz II Men. If he finds the right club – and Blackpool never seemed to fit the bill – he will love every minute of it.

No one is immune from the tyranny of time. Fowler could so easily have eased himself into the sort of ambassadorial role which Liverpool see Steven Gerrard filling in the years to come. He fits the global profile required in a new age of market penetration and brand awareness. He is known in Asia for his brief spell as player-coach of Muangthong United in Thailand, and was earmarked as a pivotal figure in the stillborn Indian Premier League.

It is too easy to sneer at his determination to rage against the dying of the light. I think there is something faintly heroic about his willingness to risk his reputation and submit to the prejudices of strangers. At a time in which Carlos Tevez is going through the motions of contrition, Fowler is obviously made of the Right Stuff.

At Blackpool he found a kindred spirit in Kevin Phillips, a player of similar instincts. Phillips is two years older, and heading for a career in management. It is difficult to see Fowler following a similar path, although his value as a specialist coach would be immense. He will probably live off his investments and his place in the pantheon of Liverpool heroes.

Dreamers are unfashionable these days. I, for one, would love to see a last hurrah. Let’s give him scope to stave off the day an innocent asks him, “Didn’t you used to be Robbie Fowler?”

Show him the money, Arsenal. The prospect may shred the business plan, and leave the suits squeezing the life out of their stress balls, but there’s no option. Robin van Persie, The Man in a one-man team, is in the perfect position to write his own cheque.

Arsenal’s negotiators, weakened by the strategic mistake of allowing the 28-year-old Dutchman to run down his contract until it has 15 months to run, might promise to break their pay structure. But talk of offering Van Persie a weekly wage of £150,000 is still too cheap.

A four-year contract, at £10million a year, might sound obscene – let’s face it, it is obscene – but the numbers add up. It would cost more than that, in transfer fees alone, to secure another striker of similarly stellar quality. Football is Moneyball, by any other name.

Captaincy at Arsenal suits Van Persie. His respect for the club, and its enduring values, is genuine. He has emerged as an understated, yet effective, leader. He is unusually considerate, eager to share the credit. Arsène Wenger talks with pride about his “exceptional development not only as a player but also as a human being”. The stats – 31 goals, 11 of them coming in the last 13 away games – scream his significance.

The taunts of Manchester City fans, that Arsenal are their feeder club, hit a nerve because they carry the ring of truth. They could afford to double, even treble, Van Persie’s money. Barcelona’s heritage of Dutch stars, established by the legend that is Johan Cruyff, needs replenishing. Real Madrid covet a marquee striker in the way a billionaire keeps a weather eye out for yet another trophy wife.

This is his time. The natural gifts, embodied by a left foot that could conduct an orchestra, are at their peak. The awareness he showed, in taking that momentary glance to check Pepe Reina’s positioning as the ball came to him before Arsenal’s winning goal at Anfield on Saturday, was a product of instinct and experience.

He’s a leading candidate to be Footballer of the Year, but would he be worth an eye-watering contract? In economic terms, because of the lack of a resale value, it is debatable. But in football terms, he is irreplaceable. If Arsenal allow him to leave, on his terms, their credibility will be shot to pieces.