With pre-season done and dusted, the first Premier League-North fixture is just around the corner for Derby County’s Under-18s and Jayden Mitchell-Lawson says that his side have taken no short-cuts.
At 1pm on Friday afternoon at the Training Centre in partnership with the University of Derby, Justin Walker’s and Rory Delap’s side are set to take to Liverpool.
It is a fixture, which all of the squad have had one-eye on since returning for pre-season at the beginning of July.
And after a successful end to the season in the 2016/17 campaign, Mitchell-Lawson and the rest of the squad will be hoping that they can maintain, and even improve, on the significant progress that was made last year.
Speaking to RamsTV, the attacking midfielder explained: “We’ve worked really hard in the off-season and over pre-season, everyone has come back looking in great shape and now we are all looking forward to the game.
“Everything on the training ground is in preparation for Friday’s game and you have to take every one of the sessions seriously.
“The game could very easily be decided by one goal so you have to treat every little aspect of training as important as you possibly can.”
On the game itself, he added: “There is a lot of interest surrounding the game with it being Steven Gerrard’s first in charge but we are all just focusing on what we have to do in order to beat Liverpool.
“It is all about the three points and that is exactly what we want the outcome to be.”
As Mitchell-Lawson explained, there are no shortcuts when it comes to pre-season.
As the old saying goes, you only get out what you put in. If that is the case, then Mitchell-Lawson insists that him and the rest of his teammates are destined for a very promising campaign.
The second-year scholar added: “The start of pre-season has been quite long and tiring, but you have to get through it and you have to work hard – there are no shortcuts.
“Now that the early work has been done, the first game has come around really quick and so the focus now turns to winning as many games as we can to maintain and build on the progress that we made last season.
“We’ve got our game planned and everybody knows what they need to do against Liverpool.
“All our training sessions of late have been about preparing for the game and we are in a position now where we feel ready to go.
“I feel that physically and mentally we are ready to go, now is just about counting down to the game.”
