Rodolfo's hopes for 2012
Rodolfo Borrell has revealed what he expects from his young side in 2012 as Liverpool Reserves travel to Bolton Wanderers tonight in their first outing of 2012 – a match you can watch exclusively live on LFC TV and LFC TV Online from 6pm.
With a last eight NextGen Series tie away at Tottenham Hotspur in the pipeline, there is a lot of football to be played between now and the end of the season.
With the Barclays Premier Reserve League programme closing down for three weeks at Christmas, Borrell gave his squad a five day break over the festive period, and now they are raring to go against Bolton.
Kick-off at the Lancashire FA County Ground in Leyland is at 7pm, but join our live coverage on LFC TV and LFC TV Online from 6pm.
"Our targets in 2012 are for the lads to keep up their high level of performance and keep progressing," Borrell told Liverpoolfc.tv.
"Because of the gap in fixtures in the reserve league we decided to give the lads a five-day break over Christmas. This was important both physically and mentally, because they have been working really hard in training.
"We had a very good first part of the season and it's easy to forget but we had a very tough pre-season. As everyone knows we have a very young squad this season at reserve team level, so they needed to be ready to make the step-up from Academy football.
"This will be our first competitive game in three weeks and the lads are raring to go again."
Back in November, Borrell's charges produced an impressive display to beat Bolton 3-1 at the Kirkby Academy and the coach is hoping for a similar performance from his side tonight.
"As always we will go into the game with the right focus, the right mentality with the idea of working hard as a team," he added.
"This season Bolton have used some experienced players in their team so this will be another test for our lads.
"Overall we have done well this season. We lost to Manchester United with 10 men when Suso was sent-off, and it was difficult to play against them for an hour and they had people like Gibson, Diouf and Macheda in their team.
"We did really well in our last game which we drew with Fulham. It was a fantastic game and I think we had more chances than them, but in the end a draw was fair.
"Winning is very important, especially at Liverpool Football Club, and we set out to try and win every game we play.
"Performances from the team and player development is very important but so is winning games, and the players need the winning mentality."