Keith Southern felt the scoreline was tough on Everton Under-18s after they fell to a 6-1 Merseyside derby loss at USM Finch Farm.

The young Blues went into Saturday’s Premier League (North) clash in fine form, having won three on the spin, and took the lead through England Under-17 international Tyler Onyango.

But two late first-half strikes saw Liverpool edge ahead before the visitors hit four more in the second half.

"When you see the scoreline it would suggest we were pummelled from pillar to post, but it wasn't like that,” said Everton Under-18s assistant manager Southern. “For 40 minutes, I thought we are by far the better team and could have been two or three goals ahead.

"In the second half, we asked the players to come out and show the same spirit as they did in the first but we never really did that. I thought we crumbled a little bit and we didn't do the basics well enough to stay in the game and eventually go on a create opportunities to win it.

"It is a learning curve for our young lads. Setbacks happen and we have to be a little bit more resilient in certain areas of the pitch, but we will be better for the experience, I am sure."

Onyango celebrated his England Under-17s call up in the best possible way with an eighth-minute opener. After a teasing ball into the box struck the post, Onyango was in the right place at the right time to slide the ball home.

Everton continued to carve out chances, this time the post coming to the away side's rescue after Thomas Cannon's sweetly-struck volley. Then, just minutes later, Cannon was in the thick of it again, heading over from Reece Hughes' free-kick.

With just minutes left of the first-half, those missed opportunities came back to bite the home side as Liverpool took the lead and never looked back.

The international break means Everton are without a game next weekend, and Southern hopes the time off will give the squad time to reflect ahead of their trip to Wolves on Saturday 19 October.

“It is a chance to re-group. We have some lads on international duty, which is great for them.

"It is a development programme, we aim to improve this side.

"We will analyse this performance, looking at the positives and how we can get better, looking for a response the next time we play."