As for the playing rules, I know they exist, my suggestion was to have Higuain, Drenthe or Marcelo playing for the youth team for either a full year, or for the max amount of games as to adjust to Spanish football in a less pressure intensive environment.

Modrego has pretty decent passing, but his defensive work is poor so comparing him to Xabi is illogical. I really hope Bueno makes some progress this season, there’s no doubting his talent, and he’s really quite quick as well.

And Corey I believe there’ some sort of regulation that states that if a player makes 10 (or was it 6?) appearances for the senior squad, he will be inelligible to play for the Castilla team, AND vice-versa a Castilla player cannot play for the senior squad.

Finally, I had no idea about this Standard Liege thing, but this is really good news. Aside from the potential talent we may pickup, anothee advantage of a feeder club in Belgium is if there’s an issue for EU spots, the player can be loaned out to them, get some valuable experience, and then have a European prospect after 3 years in Belgium. Obviously 3 years is quite a while so it should only be done with youngsters, and there’d be concerns about whether the youngster would get the same oppurtunity to succeed there, but Standard have a record for producing talent and I’m sure their facilities are up to scratch.

As for Benavente, he is with the Infantile A team playing with Enzo Zidane. He is only 14, so I dont expect much from him right now, the lowest down I go is the C team with 16-17 year olds who still are far to young for any sort of pressure of course.