Burton Albion under-18s manager Sam Rose believes that Friday's match against Liverpool was a "positive learning experience" for an academy that is still in its infancy.
The Brewers fell to a 7-0 defeat to the Reds' under-18s side, managed by Steven Gerrard in the England legend's first game in management.
But the Albion youngsters managed to bounce back from that loss and follow it up with a 4-1 away win over Reading, with goals coming from Noaman Mallass, Kyle Clamp, Jake Davies and a trialist.
That success was their third in four pre-season outings so far this summer, with victories already in the bag against Nottingham Forest and Crewe Alexandra.
It is an exciting time for an academy that is making big strides in line with the first-team's rise into the Championship. They have a friendly against the Qatari under-19 national side to come on Tuesday night and will be based at St George's Park throughout next season.
That, alongside regular first-team appearances in pre-season for recent graduates Joe Sbarra, Ben Fox, Marcus Dinanga and Jayden Cotterill, shows that the academy is certainly heading in the right direction.
And Rose reckons that the Albion stars of the future can use such experience as a chance to gauge themselves against the very best.
"It was a fantastic experience for everyone involved and it was a good chance to showcase how far the academy has come", he told the club website after the Liverpool loss.
"It is a difficult result to take for everyone involved. The players are particularly disappointed, but we created a number of chances and played some good football, at times, against one of the best academies in the country, if not in Europe.
"It was a positive learning experience for us and a chance to gauge where we are and to identify things that we can improve on.
"Hopefully the group can use it as a marker for success, they have been exposed to the level that is required to play at the top tier of Academy football.
"The second-half was much better, we changed the shape and it gave us more of a chance to press the ball and try to stop Liverpool having so much of the possession and from then on we really should have scored three or four goals from the chances we created.
"We thank Liverpool FC and St George's Park for making it possible. It's onwards and upwards for Burton Albion academy, we will use experiences like today to drive us forward."
