Liverpool's Under-18s endured a miserable afternoon at the Kirkby Academy as they were beaten 4-0 by Sunderland on Saturday afternoon.
The Reds fell behind early on when Sunderland defender Henry Fieldson headed in from a corner. Goalkeeper Luke Hewitson was calling for a foul, but the referee saw no infringement.
The young hosts matched their more physical counterparts in certain areas of the pitch and looked tidy in possession until the final third, but it was the Black Cats who continued to carve out the game's biggest chances.
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Ethan Moore flashed a shot across goal after a superb run from his own half just after the half-hour mark before he headed over moments later.
Ranel Young forced Sunderland goalkeeper Matthew Young into his first meaningful save after Liverpool had won the ball high up the pitch before Jayden Danns put a low cross wide moments later.
Any hopes of getting back into the game were extinguished quickly in the second half, however, as Sunderland caught their hosts out with two similar goals after the break.
A quick-fire double took the game away from Marc Bridge-Wilkinson's side as Sunderland made it 3-0 inside 10 minutes of the second half. The second arrived via Mason Cotcher after great work from Ben Middlesmas, before the same pair combined once more moments later.
Young came closest to clawing back a consolation when his curled effort struck the base of the post, but it was the excellent Middlesmas who rounded off the result with an outside-of-the-foot finish after a razor-sharp counter-attack.
"It was tough and obviously there's a lot of learning to be done from parts of the game," Bridge-Wilkinson told the ECHO after the game. "Sometimes you are better off not saying a lot, so I am not sure I will speak to them today. It might be that we do this debrief on Monday or Tuesday and let the emotion of the situation die down.
"We will analyse this the same way as we do with any game. We will break it down on the individual side of it, the team side of it and we will try to look at the bits where we think we can improve quickest and with the most impact. We play as a team so we will analyse it in the same way we always do."
One plus point for the U18s was the return of Calum Scanlon who made his first appearance since picking up an injury in pre-season. The left-back looked assured in possession and tried to get forward whenever possible on what was an otherwise forgettable day for the team.
Bridge-Wilkinson added: "It wasn't a particularly great day but the big plus of the day is Calum Scanlon coming back from injury. We've missed him since pre-season, so it was good to have him back.
"Obviously he's a bit rusty in terms of game time but he is training every day and he looks like we know he can. So in time when he gets more games, he will look a lot smoother."
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