Sunday, July 27, 2008

McAuley: U18S Will Improve

Liverpool Under-18s will continue their preparations for the new Academy league season when they host Plymouth Argyle in a friendly match this afternoon.

Boss Hughie McAuley feels his squad will have benefitted from the experience they gained during what was a tough 2007-08 campaign and is confident he will have a much stronger group of players at his disposal this time around.

"Today we play Plymouth and then we've got Bradford coming up too," he told LFC TV.

"So it gives us two home games to try a few things out on what is a really good pitch at the Academy. Hopefully we can push on and improve our overall game.

"It'll give us the chance to look at more players against sides we don't normally play against and set us up nicely ahead of our trip to Spain in a few weeks time.

"There's always a buzz when you come back for pre-season training because you haven't seen the boys or staff for several weeks and it's nice to get back as a full group and begin work.

"I think I learned a lot about the players last year because we had a particularly young group.

"They are now more experienced so it's good for their development and this year we are hoping that it will give the squad a bit more of a backbone. We obviously have some new players coming in too and we are looking forward to working with them, so I think we've got a decent squad of players.

"We've got the likes of Adam Pepper and Jack Metcalf who figured last season as well as some other new players.

"Then there's Michael Roberts and even Alex Kacaniklic, who's a very young under-18 player, so we've got a bit more experience but some very good first year players too."

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