Former Liverpool hard man Graeme Souness has urged the club to spend money in January as the Reds will struggle to win anything if they are relying on their youth set up.

New boss Brendan Rodgers has already put trust in a number of academy graduates this season and the likes of Raheem Stirling and Martin Kelly are set to play a big role throughout this campaign along with another dozen or so under-21 players featuring in various competitions.

But Souness is worried that the club will end up relying on its youngsters to have any chance of improving on the previous two seasons’ woes, and that is not a position he wants to see the club in.

“They need more (experienced players),” he told talkSPORT.

“You can dress it up any way you want to, you can wait a few more years for kids to come through, but that is a risky strategy. You can never rely on that.

“If you go back to what Man United had 15 years ago with four or five top players coming through and they’ve been mainstays in that team and created what United are today, I don’t think you can rely on that because it has never happened before and it has not happened since.

“You’ve got [Paul] Scholes, [Ryan] Giggs, David Beckham, Gary Neville, Nicky Butt. They had a group coming through that were just exceptional.”