'We have a really good mentality, we want to bounce back quickly'
Barry Lewtas is in no doubt his Liverpool U23s players have the mentality to bounce back from a sobering result when they return to action this weekend.
The young Reds’ last outing ended in a 7-2 defeat at home to Manchester City a fortnight ago, but Lewtas insists spirit remains high as they prepare to continue their Premier League 2 campaign.
Indeed, the U23s are still only a point behind the leaders in the division before they host Blackburn Rovers at the Academy on Saturday afternoon.
The 1pm GMT kick-off is a game you can watch live on LFCTV and LFCTV GO with our single-camera coverage.
We caught up with Lewtas for a pre-match interview in which he discusses the lessons learned from the City loss, a special night for the Academy in midweek and the determination to respond against Blackburn…
On Leighton Clarkson making his Champions League debut in midweek...
It was a proud moment for Leighton and his family. It’s what I always say, it’s the hard work, commitment and sacrifice of the player that gets him to that level. Obviously, our job as coaches is to try to support and guide him. Leighton was in my first team when I joined Liverpool. He was an 11-year-old in the U12s team. To now see, all them years later, him play in the Champions League was fantastic. You are proud of him but you are really pleased for Leighton and his family because that’s what they work towards. Knowing Leighton, that will be a taste for him and I’m sure he will want to keep working hard and stay as focused and committed as he is to try to get more opportunities. It was a really good night and it was great to see Billy Koumetio make his debut as well, and of course Trent Alexander-Arnold getting the captain’s armband, which was a fantastic and deserved honour.
On the defeat against City…
It was a combination of two things. Certainly it would be fair to say we were disappointed with certain parts of our game and I think you’ve always got to look at yourselves when you lose games and also when you win games – what you’ve done well and what you haven’t done quite as well. But also you need to reflect and be honest and we caught City on a hot day, as I thought they were excellent and I thought they were extremely clinical. They caught us out on the counter-attack a few times and we can always look at ourselves and be disappointed with certain parts of the game.
Unfortunately, on the day we were certainly second-best. It would be a huge concern if we were second-best week in, week out and doing more things wrong than we were doing right – but that’s certainly not been the case. We certainly don’t brush it under the carpet, we’ve watched it back as a group and we’ve ironed out a few things on the grass that we thought we could have done better. At the same time, we have to give credit to the opposition on that particular day.
It’s important when you win games you don’t get too high and think you are the best team in the world. And it’s important when you do lose a game you don’t go away and think you are the worst team in the world as well. This is a group of players I certainly don’t worry about [getting too down] because we have a really good mentality and a group of lads who certainly take ownership from that performance against City – just as they do when they play well.
On an otherwise encouraging start to the season overall…
It seems strange that we don’t play as many games because of the situation we are in due to COVID, not being able to play cup games and international cup games. So we are not playing as many games as we’d like but I think you can see how closely-matched the teams are. Teams are beating each other, teams are winning games and losing games. Premier League 2 is a tight, competitive competition, which is what you want. We want the boys to be challenged in every game that they are in, we are certainly getting that and I think over the course of the season so far we’ve certainly managed to put in a number of good performances. But I think what’s more important is that we are still seeing that individual development of players. As well as playing well as a group, I really think some boys are pushing on and improving, developing and obviously getting opportunities. Overall at the moment, as staff and as a group of players, we are happy with what we are doing but we know we can get better.
On Saturday’s home game against Blackburn…
It will be a really good test. The league seems really close in terms of a level playing field, so we know we are going to be in for a really tough game, as we have been in every game so far. The lads are raring to go. A heavy loss doesn’t happen very often to us and we want to bounce back as quick as possible.