BLACKBURN Rovers Under 21s boss Eric Kinder refused to be too critical of his young side after they went down to a 5-0 Lancashire FA Senior Cup quarter-final defeat to a star-studded Manchester United team.

But Kinder, whose line-up contained players still eligible to play for the club’s U18s side, insisted they must learn from the experience.

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After an even opening 25 minutes a United team containing nine players with first-team experience, including Jonny Evans, Ander Herrera and Adnan Januzaj, ran out comfortable winners at rain-lashed Leigh Sports Village on Tuesday night.

And Kinder said: “We batter them about ball retention day in and day out and they are getting a lot better at it.

“But when you are up against players of that calibre you quickly find out that if you give it away, you don’t get it back for a long time.

“We will look at the DVD of the game again and if we can’t learn from it then we are foolish.

“Being honest, when you see their team-sheet you wonder what it is going to finish but I thought 3-0 at half-time was a bit harsh because we did cause them problems. In the second half, though, if they would have scored three or four I could have accepted that.

“But you look at the quality they have. Their second goal was scored by Herrera, a lad they paid £29m for, and he’s on the same pitch as our Academy lads, so you can’t be too critical.”

The match marked the U21s debut of 16-year-old defender Alex Nyambe.

And Kinder said: “I’ve been quite impressed with him when I’ve seen him play for the U18s.

“There was an opportunity to bring him up (from the Academy) during the week to have a quick look at him and he ended up training with the first team. Reports came back that he did ever so well so we thought, ‘let’s throw him in’.

“And I thought he acquitted himself very well.”