Liverpool are the club reported by Crewe over an alleged illegal approach to sign a player from their academy, BBC Radio Stoke understands.

rlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/c/crewe_alexandra/8241607.stmrl

Toffees eye Bolivian free agent stopper.

rlhttp://msnsport.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12040_5543644,00.htmlrl

Platini has put them up to it.

About time some clubs started standing up to the "big boys", Bradford City seem to take great delight in providing 13 and 14 year olds to "big" clubs, rather than trying to keep hold and develop them so they are of some benefit to us.

Interesting move. One thing we could do is cover across the backline, especially centre half. Only really have Yobo and Distin available until Jags is back.

And you can't get cheaper than free

Thanks for Andre

Didn't Fabian Delph move from the Bantams to Leeds United when he was about 13 years old?

Even more ridiculous than that - he was 11.

To be honest we did OK out of him, we made about £600k and he is vastly overrated IMO, but in the last season or two we've also lost players to Middlesbrough, Liverpool and both Manchester clubs - there is a chance we might make something from them in the long run, but it's just as likely they'll get chewed up and spat out of the big Premiership academies without amounting to anything.

Yeah, we got Andre Wisdom from you. He got on the bench for the reserves last year and he was only 15, considering the majority of reserve players are 18+, it shows how well he's played. Was in the 18's at 14, too. Potentially brilliant player.

Or how little depth you have.

It's naive to expect that players are going to stay at a league 2 club when there is interest from a club like Liverpool, and some of these players will no doubt go on to achieve good things in the game.

However some of the bigger clubs have a habit of hoovering up any potential star at 13 and 14, and the stats show that most get lost in the system, and eventually lost to the professional game altogether, only the big club has nothing to lose in this instance, the player who doesn't make it, and the "lesser" club who spent a couple of years developing him never get any benefit.

There are at least two Premier League clubs (Man City and Blackburn) who run training sessions in the Bradford area, and round here has never exactly been a hotbed of football talent, so I dread to think what it is like elsewhere.

Maybe a Real Madrid style buy-then immediate loan back-system would work.

The players involved are often too young to play in the first team though, so that wouldn't have any effect.

I don't know if there is an answer to be honest, maybe something similar to RL's service areas? As it is you can't blame a lad and his parents when they get offered decent inducements. I know there are some rules in place about the distance a child can live away from the academy he trains at, but that's nothing that can't be solved by the parents suddenly deciding they've always fancied moving.