Who is Layton Stewart? Strengths and weaknesses of Preston North End’s latest signing

Preston North End’s latest signing Layton Stewart got some minutes under his belt over the weekend against Aberdeen. The Lilywhites ended up winning 2-0 against the Scottish Premiership side on home soil.

Ryan Lowe’s men now have upcoming away friendlies against Fleetwood Town and Stockport County. Here is a look at the strengths and weaknesses of their latest addition...

Strengths

At the age of 20, Preston’s new recruit has bags of potential. He is certainly a signing for the future and will be looking to develop down the line with the Lancashire outfit.

He has risen up through the academy at Liverpool which means he will have benefitted from their top quality youth coaching and training facilities. The fact he was handed a professional deal by Jurgen Klopp shows he was highly-rated by the Reds.

Stewart made 25 appearances for the Under-18’s and scored 27 goals in 25 competitive outings. He then managed to find the net on 16 occasions in 34 outings for the Under-23’s.

As per The Athletic, ‘several’ other EFL clubs were keen on signing him. The Reds have inserted a ‘buy back’ clause into his deal at Deepdale suggesting they will keep tabs on how he does.

Weaknesses

Lack of experience is something that Preston will take into account. The youngster only played once for Liverpool in a Carabao Cup clash against Derby County in November 2022 and wasn’t able to break into their senior team, which is understandable considering the amount of top quality options that they have at their disposal in his position.

Lowe will carefully manage him and won’t want to throw him into the deep end just yet. Stewart has also had his injury problems over recent times and suffered an anterior cruciate injury to his knee a couple of years ago.