With all the fanfare over the Liverpool takeover, Rafa Benitez's January transfers and especially his emphasis on youth has been overlooked by nearly everyone. But they could prove to be as important as the takeover itself.

I remember reading Alan Hansen's biography years ago; in one story, he told how he and Kenny Dalglish watched an evening game of football and arrived back at King Kenny`s house at about one in the morning. Instead of going to bed, Dalglish searched frantically through his hundreds of channels until he found a live game of football to watch. It was only a non-event South American game, but to Dalglish it was like a drug fix. Hansen then decided that he could not devote so much of his life to football management, so instead decided to go for the easier path - the football pundit.

This brings us back to Benitez. I believe that all managers lead somewhat similar lives to Dalglish to a certain degree. In the explosion that is today's global media, it is possible for Rafa and his fellow managers to monitor football at nearly all levels globally. So they see young players and if they see some talents that impress them, they can monitor the progress of that player from an early age up until there is a possibility of giving a trial or making a move for the player before he hits the headlines and becomes less of a bargain.

I believe that all good managers monitor young players like this before sending in their scouts to provide a second opinion. Managers' knowledge of these young players is like a personal wealth; they can spend a little when they move to a new club, but also save a little by not introducing the younger players until they know that they will be staying at that club for a long period.

Benitez has strengthened the main squad from day one but has also been even more active in the Liverpool youth set-up, showing that when he signed on for the Anfield job he was in it for the long haul. Paul Anderson, Gabriel Paletta, Miki Roque, Nabil El Zhar, Besian Idrizaj, Godwin Antwi and Jack Hobbs have all been previously added to the youth set-up.

But in the January transfer window, Rafa has gone all out to show how important he sees the role of youngsters trying to make the breakthrough into the first team and create competition. This last transfer window he bought six players, Alvaro Arbeloa, Daniele Padelli, Jordy Brouwer, Emiliano Insua, Francisco Manuel Duran and Ronald Huth, most of whom are teenagers. He also got Astrit Ajdarevic, a 16-year-old Swede who has impressed so much that the Academy has broken from the norm by singling out the young striker for special praise.

But the fact that Rafa has had to bring in so many young guns illustrates how badly the Liverpool Academy is failing. Any football institution that did not see Wayne Rooney`s potential and rejected him in a trial should be questioned, and both Rafa and Gerard Houllier before him have found themselves at loggerheads with Steve Heighway, the Academy director.

It's probably a good thing that Heighway will be stepping aside in May so that Rafa can bring in his own men and give his own young imports and the new generation of trainees a better chance of making the breakthrough to the big time.

Rafa has had experience working with the Real Madrid youth teams, so I would hope that the new Liverpool board would give him more of a say in the running of the Academy after the departure of Heighway. After all, the young players are aspiring to play in Rafa's team, so why not let Benitez have a hand in teaching them his ways at an early age?

Benitez has shown his intentions already to build a youth team for the future and even with the expected windfall from our new American owners, I still expect and hope that we will be building our youth team. But now maybe we will be able to compete with Arsenal for the bigger-money young guns. I have faith in Benitez`s decisions so I think we will see some of his youth imports playing alongside Gerrard and the new stars the new money will bring in.

Is Rafa Benitez right to concentrate on youngsters for the future of Liverpool? Send your views to Sportingo.