Academy football: U18s tumble to rampant Rovers
LIVERPOOL under-18s suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat by Blackburn Rovers at Brockhall on Saturday.
Hughie McAuley's side's five-match winning run came to an abrupt end and with Manchester City winning 2-1 at home to West Brom they also lost top spot in the Premier Academy League Group C table.
Liverpool were disappointing throughout and Blackburn took the lead after keeper Dean Bouzanis dropped a cross from a corner.
The second came after a one-two from the home side who made it 2-0 at the break. Then in the second half Blackburn hit the third following another corner and completed the scoring late on.
One bright spot in the defeat was the performances of Connor Coady and Andrei Wisdon, two 16-year-old schoolboys.
McAuley said: "It was a bad result and it wasn't a good performance by a long way. It was a poor performance in every aspect and there is no excuse for it. We were well beaten on the day.
"You are looking for positives and I suppose it was the fact that our best players on the day were the two schoolboys, Connor Coady and Andrei Wisdon. Tom Ince came on in the second half and did well down the left-hand side, while Michael Scott did okay at right-back.
"Blackburn are physical, work hard and play decent football. And if the game is like that you have to match them and if you are not scoring, you need to work hard to maybe try and get something out of the game and keep it tight. But we didn't do that and never came to terms with the type of game it was."
Liverpool will look to get the defeat out of their system when they travel to face Manchester United this Saturday (kick-off 11am).
McAuley said: "It is a big game and you don't need any motivation for this type of game. Hopefully we can show last week was a blip and it gives us a chance to bounce straight back."
LIVERPOOL U18s: Bouzanis; Scott, Metcalf, Coady (Roberts 70), O'Connor; Amoo, Pepper, Ellison, Kacaniklic (Ince 60); Pourie, Eccleston (Wisdon 60). Subs: Duyan.
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if you wanna join an academy how do u apply ??
or is it even possible ?
how do you apply for an academy as good as this