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• Scot insists youngsters cannot do it on their own
• Gary Cahill and Charlie Adam among transfer targets

Kenny Dalglish believes Liverpool require further investment in players this summer despite spending £57.8m on new talent in January and overseeing the emergence of several talented youngsters from the club’s academy.

The development of Martin Kelly, Jay Spearing, John Flanagan and Jack Robinson this season, and the prospect of more graduates to come, such as the 16-year-old Raheem Sterling, have brought encouragement to a club transformed since Dalglish replaced Roy Hodgson as manager in January. Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool’s owners, and the director of football, Damien Comolli, have outlined a rebuilding strategy based on both homegrown products and top-class acquisitions, and Dalglish has insisted there can be no deviation from that policy if the team are to regain their place among the leading pack in the Premier League next season.

“It’s important that there is room for development for players, but it’s also important that you don’t use it as an excuse not to spend money and not improve what you’ve already got,” the Liverpool manager said. “Age does not determine their ability to play. So if we’re convinced we have young players who are better than what’s available, then we’ll keep our younger players. There’s no two ways about it. But that does not say we don’t want to improve as a football club in any way, shape or form. We do need to leave some path open if we do think there are players who can come in. If they develop then fine, if they don’t, we’ve got a problem. But if you buy a player in and he doesn’t produce, you’ve got a bigger problem.”

FSG’s £57.8m outlay on Andy Carroll and Luis Suárez in January, their first transfer window as owners, was another factor in Liverpool’s rediscovered optimism, although with £56m raised in the same month by selling Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel, the full extent of their largesse remains to be seen this summer.

It is still to be confirmed that Dalglish will be manager when Liverpool next enter the transfer market, of course, although talks have opened over long-term contracts for both the Scot and his first-team coach, Steve Clarke. Another indication that FSG are content with the existing managerial structure is that several targets identified by Dalglish and Comolli continue to be monitored, such as Bolton’s Gary Cahill, Blackpool’s Charlie Adam, Aston Villa’s Ashley Young, José Enrique of Newcastle and the Rennes midfielder Yann M’Vila.

“Every summer is important for the club,” Dalglish said. “The better the business, the more successful the club is going to be. If you do good business, you’ve more chance of being successful. That just doesn’t mean buying players and letting players go, it’s about developing what else you have. This summer is going to be very important, not just for Liverpool Football Club, but every football club. And the better decisions you make, the better business you do, the better chance you have of setting yourself up for next season.”

Dalglish says talk of a Liverpool revival remains premature but, with the academy prospering and the new owners in place, he is confident the club has the foundations to prosper after a turbulent period. He said: “I hope there’s a reality to it. I know this time around the football club is the same as last time around [when he was in charge from 1985 to 1991]. It’s always been everyone singing from the same hymn sheet and that’s what it is at the moment. The longer that continues the better chance we have of fulfilling dreams and ambitions. As soon as you start to diversify you have no chance.

“I think the best phrase for now is ‘work in progress’. For everybody – the owners and the football side of it. I don’t think it would be right to judge anything at this moment in time. We have to wait a while and see what happens in a year or two. It’s positive work in progress.”

Carroll and Jamie Carragher, meanwhile, will both require late fitness tests ahead of Saturday’s home game with Birmingham City. The £35m striker suffered a knee injury in the draw at Arsenal on Sunday while Carragher was carried off with concussion following a collision with Flanagan. Both have made progress this week but have not been declared fit to face Birmingham yet.

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

• Goalkeeper calls on Liverpool to invest in new players
• Reina names five Premier League teams he sees as stronger

José Reina has suggested that Liverpool need to strengthen their squad if they are to continue competing at the highest level. Although he said it would be “possible” for his team to finish in the Champions League places this season, the Liverpool goalkeeper also named five other Premier League teams that he considered to be stronger, and said that the club would lose their best players if they did not improve.

“We have to finish this season in a better position than we are at the moment [ninth] and make sure we build for the next years and try to be competitive,” Reina told ESPNsoccernet. “If not, it’s going to be difficult for them to keep these kind of players.”

“We are not probably as strong as Man City, Arsenal, Man United, Chelsea and Tottenham can be so that’s why we have to make sure we build a better squad,” Reina told ESPN Soccernet.

“At the moment, it’s almost impossible to compete for nine months against Chelsea, for example, and that is what I want. The clubs all around England are building proper squads. We have to do the same and we have to be able to compete.”

Asked about Liverpool’s chances of finishing among the top four this season, Reina added “[It is] possible; why not? But we have to be sure that we deliver better performances, otherwise it’s going to be really, really, really difficult.”

Reina also called on the team’s supporters to do their bit and offer more backing for the manager Roy Hodgson. “Rafa [Benítez] was really beloved in Liverpool,” added Reina. “But I think it’s about time that the fans get behind Roy and support Roy 100%. I don’t think it is heavy criticism out there anyway.”

LiverpoolPaolo Bandiniguardian.co.uk

Everton may be short of cash and in urgent need of a bigger stadium, but unlike Liverpool at least they have not been waking up each day wondering who will buy them next

It would be a rare Merseyside derby that found both of the participants in the bottom three, yet this will be the scenario at Goodison on Sunday should tomorrow’s game between Wolves and West Ham produce a winner. If that happens Everton will be 18th and Liverpool 19th and the Premier League table, especially for Manchester United supporters, will be one to cut out and keep.

At this early stage of the season such a situation is more of a curiosity than a portent. Should either or both teams still be in the relegation area when they meet at Anfield in the new year, fans and boardrooms alike will begin to fret in earnest. For the moment it is safe to assume that Everton and Liverpool are experiencing an autumn chill rather than a winter freeze.

At least Everton are used to it. For several seasons now they have resembled a car with a dodgy battery, needing a good shove to get the engine running properly. Liverpool, on the other hand, have not experienced so bad a start, one win in seven games, since the 1953-54 season which eventually saw them relegated.

Inevitably the bulk of the attention will be on Roy Hodgson’s struggling Liverpool team, given their labours on the field and problems off it. Everton may be short of cash and in more urgent need than ever of a new and bigger stadium, but at least they have not been waking up each day wondering who will buy them next.

Liverpool went to bed on Wednesday night comforted by the thought that they were about to see the back of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, their controversial American owners, only to be treated over the next 48 hours to a game of transatlantic legal ping-pong after Butch and Sundance, having failed to convince a judge in England, had persuaded a Texas court to block the sale of the club to John W Henry, head of a group that owns the Boston Red Sox.

An opportune moment then for a Merseyside derby to take the mind off lawyers, accountants and cigar-chomping Bostonians and contemplate instead the state of Fernando Torres’s adductor muscle. The fixture does have a habit of popping up at times of crisis to remind everybody of what football and football clubs should be about. Liverpool’s first fixture after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 was against Everton at Goodison 16 days later, when the teams shared a dignified goalless draw.

Early in 1991 they met at Goodison in a rollicking rollercoaster of an FA Cup fifth-round replay which ended at 4-4, goals from Tony Cottee having kept Everton in the tie, which they eventually won at the third attempt, in the last minute of normal time and six minutes from the end of extra time. As if that was not enough excitement for one night the Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish, still traumatised by Hillsborough and its aftermath of funerals and fury, suddenly resigned.

Presumably neither Hodgson nor Everton’s David Moyes intends to quit, whatever the result at Goodison. Yet even if Anfield was not suffering a fit of the damn Yankees, Hodgson would still be under pressure following such a poor set of results. After his team had lost at home to the Premier League ingenues of Blackpool the weekend before last, several commentators pointed out that the team’s wretchedly poor performance was down to the players rather than the owners.

Obviously this is true in the simplest sense. It was not Hicks and Gillett who went missing in the Liverpool defence. At the same time it would be naive not to realise that football teams, indeed any teams in professional sport, will often be unsettled by ructions behind the scenes.

What better than an encounter with Everton to concentrate minds on the job in hand? Forget about crazy, goal-laden cup replays. Merseyside derbies are usually stern, unyielding affairs and a repeat of the 2001 classic at Goodison, which Liverpool won 3-2 when Gary McAllister found the net in the last minute with a free-kick from 44 yards, is unlikely.

For the moment the Kop would settle for a 1-0 win anyhow while continuing to wonder at what point, in the Premier League’s eyes, people considered “fit and proper” to own a club become unfit and improper. Had Liverpool known they were going to end up a contentious piece of real estate in a Dallas courthouse they might have been better off being bought by JR Ewing.

LiverpoolEvertonDavid Laceyguardian.co.uk