Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard has urged his young teammates to grab their chance in preseason.

Gerrard says they should follow the lead of himself, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen when they were first breaking through.

He told LFC Magazine: "I see or hear some young lads talking about being patient or waiting for their chance.

"It sounds like they feel they need a 15-minute cameo in a first-team game to prove what they can do. That's not what it's about. It's about proving yourself every day in training.

"We train from 10am until 1pm or 2pm. In that time you have to show you don't want to wait around. Their attitude should be: it doesn't matter how old I am, I'm good enough. They don't want to be getting to September or October and wondering why they didn't get a chance in a game. Do it now is my message to them.

"They have to go in every day and prove to the manager that they are better than those players who are in the team. Myself and Jamie and Michael didn't wait around on the fringes of the squad hoping we'd be selected some day. We showed on the training pitch that we would do whatever it took to make the boss put us in.

"We showed the mental strength required. We proved that we were as good as, if not better than, those who had been ahead of us. That's what these lads need to do."