AcademyBristol Street Motors Trophy preview: 'It's really exciting - we'll give it our best'

The young Reds head to League Two outfit Crewe Alexandra tonight in their opening game in northern section Group E, which also includes Blackpool and Harrogate Town.

Lewtas led his team to a 3-0 win over Morecambe last season – the club's first victory in the competition since entering in the 2019-20 campaign.

Having produced an impressive opening-day result against Manchester City in Premier League 2, Liverpool will be hoping to bounce back following recent defeats by PSV Eindhoven and Leicester City.

Kick-off at Mornflake Stadium is at 7.30pm BST and the clash can be watched live on Sky Sports in the UK.

Ahead of the game, read on as Lewtas chats to Liverpoolfc.com about the start to the season and the upcoming challenge for his squad…

On the defeats by PSV and Leicester…

We came up against a real good PSV team, to be fair, and sometimes that can happen. At the weekend we were really disappointed with how we played in the second half against Leicester. Credit to them but from our point of view we felt we didn't really carry on from where I thought we were in the first half. That's the way it can go, it's early in the season and we were a couple of pre-season games short as well, so we knew maybe the start of this season was going to take us a little bit of time to find our rhythm.

There is also plenty of promise from all of the games, if I'm being honest. Even in the PSV game we had some good moments against a really good team, which I understand can be forgotten a little bit. There's certain things we did which we know we can build upon and improve, and the same with the Leicester game.

On Trey Nyoni featuring and scoring against Leicester…

Trey was an excellent player for us last season with the U21s. He has carried that on in the pre-season with the first team and it was really good to have him back with the group.

On the return of Trent Kone-Doherty after injury…

With any of the young boys who have a setback and been out for a while, you do miss them. So it's always great when they come back. It's not an easy time at any point in your career when you get injured but certainly for Trent. Having just made the step up from the U18s to the U21s, I thought he was starting to find his way at this level. It's great to have him back but we need to take our time and look after him. But to have Trent back with the group is brilliant.

On players stepping up from the U18s this season, such as Kieran Morrison…

The U21s is a little bit different at this point because obviously there's some boys around the group who maybe might go on loan and are not playing at the minute, so on and so forth. That gives an opportunity to some of the younger players. I think for a lot of the players it's about building relationships as a group and also as a team. I think the more we train together and the more we play together, the likes of Kieran will build really good relationships with the players he connects with. The players will also connect better with him as well. He was really good in certain moments against Leicester, which we were really pleased about. I'm sure the more we play together, the more things we do then those relationships will become a lot stronger.

On the test of Crewe and the Bristol Street Motors Trophy…

There has been a few sore nights for us as well in this competition, along with that great night at Morecambe last season. If you are not winning then you've got to be learning and we have certainly learnt a lot from these games – which is why we enter this competition. So, we've learned a lot more than what we've won. But over the last couple seasons I think as staff and as a playing group as well we have always wanted to put our style across and play our way. I feel that we have found a way to do that while not compromising how we want to play, but obviously giving the boys the best possible chance of winning the game.

We beat Morecambe then we came up against a really good Blackpool team, many of whom had played in the Championship the year before. We took that game as we could but pace and power certainly killed us off when they scored a few goals towards the end. Barrow, I thought we played well there, so we did find a way of imposing ourselves on the game – which we want to do.

This game at Crewe will be a really exciting night for our young players because it will be their first taste of playing against senior opposition. So for us there's only positives to be gained from it. In saying that, we are certainly not going there just to make up the numbers, we want to try to qualify from the group, which we managed to do for the first time last year. To do that, we know we need to get points on the board. We will give it our best go of trying to win.