In ‘normal’ life, when a company gets taken over you expect there to be some changes at the top. Irrespective of how good the people were or whether they were doing their job well, most of the times the feeling is that they have to go in order to make a break from the past and show that things are about to change.

That is one way, I guess, how you can explain the departures in recent weeks of key academy staff like Dave Shannon and Hughie McAuley. They weren’t bad at their job – indeed Shannon is praised in the Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard’s and Robbie Fowler’s biographies – but they had been at the academy too long to really believe that Rafael Benitez could have put in place his vision for Liverpool’s youth set-up with them in place.

Malcolm Elias is completely different. His reputation at Southampton was nothing short of exceptional having spotted the likes of Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Eddie McGoldrick. Within the space of two years at Liverpool, he had proven that those were by no way lucky finds.

Lauri Della Valle, for instance, has been a great find and worthy of the promotion to the reserves squad that he’s just achieved. Same goes for Christopher Buchtmann who was one of the stars of the Germany team that recently won the European U17 trophy. Then there is Andre Wisdom, the sixteen year old central defender who already looks capable of handling himself at a much higher level. All of these players look safe bets at making the step up.

And if Elias had managed to attract such players with all the speculation and doubt that there was around the academy set-up, one can only imagine what he could have achieved when the new system was in place and with Benitez directly over-seeing things. His, I fear, will be a major loss.

What Benitez is doing at the academy makes sense: get all teams playing the same way, focus on their technical skills, put in a mixture of local and foreign coaches all of whom are highly qualified. Yet, as with all revolutions, sometimes you run the risk of overdoing things, cutting not only the dead-wood – for want of a better word – but the whole tree.

Let’s hope that’s not the case here.