TWO early goals proved pivotal as Warrington Rylands exited the Liverpool Senior Cup at the hands of a strong Tranmere Rovers side on Tuesday night.

The League Two side had several first-team regulars in their line-up at Gorsey Lane, with all bar two of their starting XI having featured in the EFL this season.

As such, they quickly asserted their dominance and were 2-0 up inside 14 minutes – Kristian Dennis converted a penalty before James Norris doubled the lead just three minutes later.

Blues’ task got even harder when Jordan Mustoe, who was making his second debut for the club having returned last week, was sent off in the early stages of the second half, but they managed to halve the deficit when Dan Cockerline looped in a header to score his first Rylands goal.

Ultimately though, the men from Wirral saw out the victory to advance to the semi-finals.

After the game, Rovers' assistant manager, Neil Danns, said: "I thought it was a good performance. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but we had a lot of senior lads out there that needed minutes, so in terms of them getting minutes, them applying themselves, I think they definitely done that.

"First half, we moved the ball really well, found ourselves 2-0 up, and then going into the second half we probably want to add more to that.

"They've gone and had a man sent off, and after that they've just sat in really deep so it's always going to be tough to break down.

"Another pleasing point was that we got a lot of young lads a lot of minutes tonight, and Jack Bentley who I thought was absolutely outstanding today coming up against a tough competitor, they had a big lad up front, I thought he done really well next to Joe Yarney."

TRANMERE ROVERS: Conor Robson, Joe Starbuck, Joe Yarney, Jack Bentley, Dan Pike (Mikey Davies, 46), Sam Taylor, Reece McAlear (Kacper Mikulski, 65), Chris Merrie (C), James Norris, Paul Lewis (Seb Henderson, 83), Kristian Dennis.

UNUSED SUBS: Alex Brown, Ben Hockenhull, Ousmane Kane, Charlie Martin.