Roy Hodgson wants to give youth a chance but Liverpool's stars of the future may have to wait a bit longer to get a Premier League opportunity.
Securing the likes of Dani Pacheco, 19, and Martin Kelly, 20, on extended two and three-year contracts showed how keen the Merseysiders are to hang on to their up and coming players.
New England Sports Ventures, who took over the club in October, are known to favour a policy of recruiting young, less-heralded players who have shown the potential to become huge successes - a policy which served them well with the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
There are several youngsters currently on the fringes of the first team who have been given a chance in the Europa League this season as Hodgson has regularly rested senior players.
A significant number of them are likely to get a run-out for Liverpool's final pool fixture at home to Utrecht a week on Wednesday as they have already qualified as Group K winners for the last-32.
However, chances on the domestic front are harder to come by, as shown by the fact Hodgson made 10 changes for the game against Steaua Bucharest and opted to not even take five first-team regulars on the trip.
They will all, of course, return for Monday's visit of Aston Villa - where former Reds boss Gerard Houllier is finding that because of the depth of his squad he sometimes has no option but to throw youngsters into the fray.
But while Houllier, two months into the job, will be given some leeway the same cannot be said for Hodgson.
The club's poor start to the season has meant there is little margin for error from now on if they still hold out hopes of catching the top four.
That is why some of the younger players will have to be patient and take what limited chances come along.
Hodgson has done his best to expose them to high-level competitive football and he was impressed by what he saw against Steaua.
"It was a game where we knew we would be put under some pressure but the way they kept their shape and discipline was impressive," he said.
"Now they have got through that test they can be more than satisfied because they will learn a lot from that game.
"You would have to play many, many reserve matches to get the type of experience games like that bring you.
"It is great for me that got through the game, done well, and with the games coming up we will be needing these players.
"If we had lost the game we would have all, and I include myself, been wondering what would have happened if I had just taken the team that did well against West Ham and Tottenham.
"But sometimes in football when you have a lot of matches one after the other you have to make decisions which are correct for the long-term future of the club.
"The decision we made to play these players paid off and in the long term we will gain an awful lot from it."
Hodgson pointed to the improvement of Lucas Leiva and David Ngog, who have played most of the European games this season, as an indicator of what could be achieved by giving players a chance to express themselves away from the demands of the Premier League.
"It has discovered players for us. David and Lucas were, in the beginning, players many Liverpool fans thought were not good enough for the first team," said the Reds boss.
"They have used this competiion in the early stages to prove they are very much first team players and in more recent weeks we have seen players like Jonjo Shelvey emerge.
"In particular it was good for me to see Martin Kelly continuing where he left off in the games he has had but perhaps even more so for people like Dani Pacheco, Danny Wilson and Nathan Eccleston (all 19 or under)."
