Oliver Reiss was critical of his team's performance in our 3-2 defeat to Liverpool but was also quick to reiterate that difficult games, frustrating defeats, are part of his team's journey and development.
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EDS & Academy
8-minute highlights: City U18s 2-3 Liverpool](https://www.mancity.com/citytv/eds-academy/extended-highlights-city-2-3-liverpool-under-18-premier-league-north-63896388)
City fell behind three times, fighting back twice, but ultimately fell to our first north league defeat in over 12 months when we fell to a frustrating loss to Liverpool on Saturday afternoon.
Josh Sonni-Lambie gave the visitors an early lead before Floyd Samba helped City respond quickly.
Despite City looking the better side for large parts of the game, Josh Abe restored Liverpool’s lead in the second half. Jake Wain made it 2-2 just two minutes after the restart, but proved not enough when Sonni-Lambie scored the decisive goal five minutes from full-time.
Whilst the defeat will be frustrating for City’s youngsters, Reiss reassured that his team will learn from the difficult match.
“When we have a good performance, we can win every game because of the quality of the players. But when we have games like the game today and also the last weeks against Chelsea and United, the tough games, these challenges, and also losing this game today it’s another flavour or another idea of analysing games like this,” said Reiss.
MATCH REPORT | CITY 2-3 LIVERPOOL
“So no one can say we have to do certain things better. Maybe sometimes you need it to also reset a little bit and to say, okay, we need to improve in this and this.
“No one wants to lose a game, but again, especially in terms of developing the players and us as a team, it’s good to have a loss in between, and we have to use this.
“No one wants it, but we have to use it, and we can use it in a very good way. It’s Academy football, again, not happy, but when we take it as an opportunity to develop, we can take some good things out of it.”
Watch Reiss’ post-match interview in full via the video above...