This is my 15th season at Liverpool and I've been fortunate to tap in to the expertise of many players who have represented the club so distinctly.
I'd like to use this column to pay tribute to all the brilliant work our Academy mentors – Rob Jones, Steve McManaman and Michael Thomas – have done and continue to do.
I absolutely love the fact that our young players have access to people who understand the journey.
Rob, Steve and Michael can speak about what it's like to represent this great club in a way that very few people can.
Because I wasn't from Liverpool or even in the surrounding area, I thought it was really important to have people around that could help me understand what it means to be at a club like this. Having them around has been incredibly helpful.
As they've now been around for so long, they'll have seen players beginning in the pre-Academy to now ending up somewhere in the first-team environment.
They all offer so much to me, the staff and our players because of their varied experiences.
For example, Rob is a product of Crewe Alexandra's academy. Not all of our boys are going to be here from the age of six and only know Liverpool – some of them are going to come in from other clubs.
I think it's important that there's an understanding that our role models have to represent that as well. After all, Sir Kenny Dalglish, a regular visitor to Kirkby, came in from another club.
Macca obviously found his way into the first team in a different way to Rob did. He came through the ranks and would have been here with Steve Heighway, Phil Thompson, Ronnie Moran and all those coaches at the time.
I like the fact that they've all got a different story to tell.
How much they have invested themselves into the roles is incredible. They're so committed, even if it's not necessarily their full-time job.
Mickey T has arguably become one of the best signings we've made. He's primarily working with the younger age groups, whereas Rob and Macca are around the older ones.
It feels like he's here at the Academy seven days a week and he probably goes on about 20 tours a year with various teams.
Rob will often phone up lads that are on loan or boys that have been injured. He'll then suddenly appear next to you at Sunderland away on a wet Saturday morning, having driven there or got on the coach to spend some time with the staff.
Meanwhile, even if Macca is working on the Champions League, he'll find a way of getting to an Academy game and being around it.
All three would probably say to me that they're not coaches – but they're wrong. What they mean is that it wouldn't be easy for them to take a training session.
However, when it comes to imparting a bit of information to a player, then the gem that they give is as good as anything we've got here.
It's that quiet word, it's the conversation with the coach, it's the presence.
I couldn't do this article without mentioning a few more former players who help our boys on their journeys.
Steven Gerrard was, of course, our U18s manager at one point and still comes back to the Academy.
Robbie Fowler has been amazing as well. He's someone I know who's always had a huge amount of support and affection for the Academy.
It's hard to talk about the demands of playing at Anfield or the demands of being around a first team if you haven't actually done that – and that's why I think it's important to have those people that have felt it and succeeded at it, too.
It's also important to embrace other people who have come through the Academy and perhaps it hasn't quite worked out from a footballing perspective.
With the values they've got, they're also really important to the future of what we're trying to do here.
Working within the set-up now in various positions are Phil Charnock, Tom Clayton, Steve Gorst, Jordan Hunter, Jordan Lussey, Neil Mellor, John Miles, Jon Newby, Jay Spearing and Michael Yates to name a few.
They've all come through the Liverpool system and know what this club is about.
I have always said we want to respect the past but not live in it.
But I think that it's important that you have people here just gently nudge and direct the staff and myself around what it means to be at Liverpool.
I've always felt that it's their club. It's obviously the supporters' club but that core group of players that have played still very much see it as their club.
I'm just a custodian at the minute and I think it's nice to have people around you – whether it's Kenny, Robbie, Mickey T, Rob or Macca or whoever else comes in – to just keep an eye and make sure that you're doing things the way that they would deem to be the correct way.
They are a source of strength that I draw on frequently and we all appreciate them here at Kirkby so much.
Alex
Alex Inglethorpe was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Glenn Price
