00:00 to be joined by our colleague Will Rooney from Liverpool World. Will, thank you very
00:04 much for joining us today. Your first appearance on a YouTube blog.
00:09 Indeed, yeah. Looking forward to it. Plenty of chat to share about Ben's Oklahoma.
00:16 Is this allowed, Lewis, are we allowed English people on this show, do you think?
00:20 I will be fine. I'm an avid watcher of Steel Games, will my fail to pass on this one?
00:29 So, for the viewers, the reason Will is here is we're going to be talking about Ben Doak,
00:35 who's obviously one of the most exciting young prospects in Scottish football, one of the
00:40 most exciting young prospects our game has produced in quite some time. Look, we've gotten
00:45 ahead of ourselves before Lewis, you know, several players spring to mind. Barry Bannon
00:50 is a great example of someone we had high hopes for that didn't quite hit the heights
00:54 and he's just one of many. But so he's obviously, just to break it down, he's been playing fairly
01:00 regularly for Liverpool during pre-season by the looks of it. He scored his first goal
01:04 in a 4-0 win against Leicester City in Singapore. He's still only 17, but he did manage five
01:11 appearances for Liverpool last season. Will, how much have you seen of him and just how
01:16 excited can Scotland fans be for the future?
01:19 Yeah, I've seen a fair bit of him, to be honest with you. And I think he's definitely
01:25 surpassed expectations so far. I mean, he's surpassed expectations within his first few
01:31 months. Obviously, he'd come from Seltzer and he was first with the under-18s because
01:35 he was only 16 and you thought, well, start him off with the under-18s. He was a lecturer.
01:39 You move him up to the under-21s and it was just as easy for him. And then he's all of
01:44 a sudden around Jürgen Klopp's first team and his debut, he signed professional terms
01:50 when he turned 17. That's when you're only allowed to. Liverpool snapped him off as soon
01:55 as he could. And then he made his debut off the bench against Derby in the Cowboy Cup.
02:00 Everyone's heard so much about him. You just left mesmerised in that cameo off the bench.
02:07 There have been a couple of moments, I think there was one moment against Aston Villa,
02:11 a boxing day where he just skipped past Lucas Dean. Like he wasn't there in a lot of France
02:17 international, he was skipping past. I think last season, yeah, in all competitions, like
02:23 12 goals, 8 assists. That's under-18, under-19, under-21 level, which is superb returns, you
02:31 say for someone who isn't even 18 yet. And this pre-season, you expect him to feature
02:37 prominently and every time he plays, Liverpool fans want to see him. He just gets you off
02:43 your seat. He's fearless. He just, as I say, he just wants to beat defenders. He just wants
02:52 to go at them, run at them, take them on. End product is lacking at the minute, but
02:57 that's understandable. That will come. What is there so far? You can't help but be excited.
03:02 I'm sure a lot of Scotland fans are really intrigued to see how he's developed at Liverpool
03:06 this season and whether he goes into maybe the senior squad at some point.
03:13 Does he fit into that Liverpool system quite well? Because obviously he's more of an out-and-out
03:17 winger, but would he be sort of interchangeable with players like maybe Salah and Luis Diaz
03:23 if need be? I know they're traditionally more like wide forwards than traditional wingers
03:27 and obviously he's not at the standard of those types of players yet, certainly not
03:31 Salah. Maybe one day, hopefully. But yeah, can he slot into the sort of formation there
03:36 quite easily when needed?
03:37 Yeah, definitely. That's what he's been doing pre-season, been playing on that right-hand
03:41 side coming on for Mo Salah. Yeah, he's a little bit different to Salah. Maybe Salah
03:47 doesn't beat as many players. He maybe looks to get in behind a little bit more, sort of
03:55 run on to balls rather than just wants to pick it up and go up and win this. So Liverpool
03:58 have got two good options there, as you say. It's going to be difficult for them with Mo
04:02 Salah to get any real game time this season, you know, substantially because Salah is very
04:09 durable as well. He doesn't even pick up injuries, so there's another chance there. It would
04:12 be interesting to see if Jadon Clough might play him on the left wing at times. As you
04:16 say, you've got Luis Diaz, you've got Darwin Nunes, players there, Diogo Zoto and Cody
04:21 Gafpo. So probably not going to be too many opportunities there. But certainly with Liverpool
04:27 in the Europa League in the early group stage, Liverpool in the Champions League, of course
04:33 they get through to the Champions League and will play the strongest team because it is
04:36 so difficult to get out of the group. But in the Europa League, it is a little bit different.
04:41 You imagine Jadon Clough is going to give some of his fringe players a chance. Yeah,
04:46 there's no real other candidate. Harvey Elliott can play on the right as well, the right wing,
04:51 but I'm not fully convinced he's a winger himself. So there might be some big chances
04:56 with Dalton Yorne.
04:57 There's been a lot of murmurs up here in Scotland, Will, that he's being talked about for the
05:09 senior national team at this stage. I know he's featured a couple of times for the 21s.
05:14 At this stage, I'm thinking the kind of charted progression that Billy Gilmore had through
05:21 his time at Chelsea. Do you feel he would be ready for that step at this stage of his
05:27 career?
05:28 I think looking at him, he probably won't be. He hasn't had a lot of senior games. He's
05:34 training with Liverpool every day. He's been training with them for more than a year. And
05:40 if he wasn't with Liverpool, you'd probably be saying he'd be playing a lot more. He's
05:43 just at a top club with top attackers. I dare say he could play minimum championship level
05:51 this season. Liverpool don't traditionally loan players out before they're 18, but they
05:57 did that with Harvey Elliott to Blackburn. And it wouldn't surprise me if they did get
06:02 a good offering that appealed, that they sent him to the championship maybe, because that's
06:06 probably the level he would be, and it would be a good championship team as well. So if
06:11 you're playing at that level, then would it be fair to say you'd like to know more than
06:15 me that if you're playing at the top end of the championship, you'd be getting into the
06:20 Scotland squad at a minimum. And then you look at players like Nathan Paterson, who
06:25 isn't massively experienced, but he obviously is around the Scotland squad as well. Obviously
06:32 playing for Everton. So yeah, I personally think, just come back to the fact that the
06:39 level of the training with every day and if he's doing it, he'll keep him around and he's
06:43 doing it in Europa League. And I think it would be difficult for Steve Clarke to ignore.
06:48 Yeah, I think the biggest problem with Scotland is like you're asking if he can fit into Liverpool's
06:52 sort of formation as he might struggle to do that with Scotland because Scotland don't
06:56 play with wingers or wide forwards. It's obviously all their width comes from the fullbacks.
07:02 And you look at someone like Ryan Fraser, who traditionally struggled to get into the
07:07 Scotland team, another player who liked to take men on and beat them. So I hope that
07:12 we can, that Steve Clarke, he solved the Kieran Tierney, Andy Robertson conundrum. So I'm
07:17 confident he can figure out how to get Ben Doak into the team if need be. But listen,
07:23 thank you very much for joining us. Well, that was really insightful. And I'm sure like
07:27 Liverpool fans, much like Scotland fans will be hoping we see a lot more of Ben Doak this
07:31 season. But that's all we've got time for on this week's show. Thanks as always to Lewis.
07:36 to all for joining us. We'll be back again next week with more Scottish Flipboard Talk.
