Bobby Clark Player Profile: Liverpool FC

bobby clark playing for liverpool u21s

For football fans of a certain age, there is something very depressing about seeing players make it into the first team when you remember watching their dads playing. That is very much what happened to a load of Liverpool fans when Bobby Clark started making regular appeared for the Reds. Lee Clark, Bobby’s dad, played regularly for the likes of Newcastle United, Sunderland and Fulham, having been born in Wallsend.

Having played regularly in the Premier League during his playing career, Lee was well-known to football supporters during the 1990s and early 2000s, with Bobby arguably feeling as though he had a lot to live up to.

For some Liverpool supporters, the idea of depending on youth players means that the season has gone wrong somewhere. There are many who would happily see the club spend tens of millions of pounds rather than play Academy graduates. Thankfully for both the sensible Liverpool fans and the young players themselves, Jürgen Klopp never bought into that mindset.

The German was always keen to give youth a chance during his time in the Anfield hot-seat, which included during his final season in England. It is thanks to that way of thinking that Bobby Clark joined the likes of Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley in making a name for himself in 2023-2024.

Who is Bobby Clark?

Lee Clark was favoured by the Newcastle United fans, having come through the youth system there before making over 200 appearances for the club. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that his son Bobby also joined the Academy of the Magpies. Born on the seventh of February 2005 in Epsom, Surrey, Bobby Lamont Clark signed with the Birmingham City Youth Development Centre during the period of time that his father was the manager at the Blues.

In 2014, however, the family moved back to the north-east and Bobby did a tour of the various clubs in the area. It was at that point that he decided to join the Newcastle United Academy, just like his dad.

He remained in the Newcastle Academy system for the following seven years, becoming a fan favourite and enjoying his time there as a Newcastle supporter himself. When Steve Bruce was the Magpies’ manager, he highlighted Clark as one of the club’s major prospects.

There was a sense of frustration at St James’ Park, therefore, when he chose to depart for Liverpool. It was after he spoke to Alex Inglethorpe and other key personnel in the setup, having visited Kirkby and Anfield, that he chose to make the move to Merseyside, turning down offers from the likes of Manchester City, Manchester United, Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur.

There is little doubt that the presence of Jürgen Klopp in the Anfield dugout and the German’s keenness in using youth players also helped to persuade Clark that Liverpool was the right place to go. With the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Harvey Elliott having been given plenty of opportunities by the time that Clark needed to make his decision, there was a clear path to first team football that has now been realised.

He made his debut for Liverpool’s Under-18s side against Nottingham Forest, scoring in the game and reiterating the quality that he would bring to the club once he had properly broken into the first team.

It was Liverpool’s Head of Senior Academy Recruitment, Matt Newbury, who brought Clark to the attention of others in the club’s recruitment web. He worked with the then-Head of Recruitment, Dave Fallows, and Chief Scout Barry Hunter to get the signing over the line, which happened in the August of 2021.

When his dad spoke to The Athletic in 2020, he said that Clark was ‘very athletic’ with ‘a good change of pace’ and ‘good leadership skills’. Lee Clark, of course, was well-placed to offer his son advice about how to make it, telling him that he was ‘on the lowest rung of a very big ladder’ and that ‘it takes a lot of work and dedication’.

Turning Pro

Bobby Clark signed a professional contract with Liverpool in the February of 2022, having cost the club around £1.5 million to sign. It was a five-year contract, with Jürgen Klopp personally promising him a path to the first team. That path included playing for the Under-18s, having done so in Newcastle at the age of 14.

He was part of the Under-18 squad for the 2021-2022 season, scoring 13 goals in 23 matches, also playing for the Liverpool team that featured in the Premier League 2 division. It was enough to earn him a place on the Liverpool squad for the pre-season tour of Thailand and Singapore in the summer of 2022.

In the August of 2022, Clark was identified by BBC Sport as one of the ‘Five Young English Footballers to Watch Out for‘, being a forward who can also play in midfield. When Liverpool named their squad for the opening match of the 2022-2023 season, Clark was amongst the names that were due to take on Crystal Palace.

He didn’t make it onto the pitch then, but he did make his professional debut when he came on as a substitute during Liverpool’s 9-0 thwacking of Bournemouth at Anfield, replacing Trent Alexander-Arnold with seven minutes plus stoppage time to go. It was the start of a good year for Clark.

On the ninth of November 2022, Clark got his first Liverpool start when the Reds played Derby County in the League Cup. The League One side managed to keep the Reds out for 90 minutes, seeing the then-cup holders needing penalty shoot-out heroics from Caoimhín Kelleher to see them through to the next round.

Clark impressed, managing some nutmegs and decent drives in the middle of the park to capture the attention of both the manager and the watching Liverpool supporters before being substituted for Harvey Elliott just after the hour mark. When the Reds drew Manchester City in the next round, the youth players weren’t used.

For Clark, the fact was that he was very much in the manager’s thoughts as a backup to the first-team players. So it was that he made numerous appearances in the Premier League in the 2023-2024 season, albeit with most of them being from the substitute’s bench.

When Liverpool made it to the final of the League Cup, facing fellow Premier League side Chelsea, Bobby Clark was the first unenforced substitution that the manager made, replacing fellow youth player Conor Bradley after 72 minutes. With the game ending up going to extra-time, it meant that Clark played for around an hour, impressing as the Reds won the trophy for a record-extending tenth time.

Playing for England

Bobby Clark made his debut for England’s Under-16 side in the April of 2021 when the Three Lions played Wales. It took about a year and a half for him to make the step up to play for the Under-18s, making his debut for the new age group on the 21st of September 2022 when they took on the Netherlands in a match played in Pinatar.

Leo Castledine scored the winning goal in stoppage time in the second-half, with Clark being taken off just before the hour mark. Under a year later and Clark had moved up another age group, appearing for the Under-19s in a game against Germany that England actually lost 1-0.

In that match he entered the play after 66 minutes as a replacement for Millwall’s Romain Esse. Whilst playing for England isn’t something that a lot of Liverpool fans put much stock in, it is unquestionably a sign of how highly thought of Clark is that he was constantly being asked to move up through the age ranges. It might help to explain why he was given a new long-term contract with the Reds in the December of 2023.

The future for Clark certainly looks bright, even with Jürgen Klopp’s departure from Anfield at the end of the 2023-2024 season, with both Liverpool and England likely to use him more and more as he grows and gains experience.

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