Liverpool discovered their Champions League group stage opponents and will face Ajax, Napoli and Rangers in the next couple of months, in the hope of booking our place in the knockout rounds of the competition.
Speaking after the draw was completed (via sscnapoli.it), Luciano Spalletti spoke about his Italian team’s chances within the group: “We’ve been pitted against three very tricky teams but I don’t think they’ll be too happy to have got Napoli either.
“We’ve ended up in a really difficult group, but then nearly all Champions League groups are. It’s always hard to put a percentage on your chances of going through.
“The main thing is we do ourselves justice in the world’s premier club competition – and doing ourselves justice means increasing our chances of reaching the next round.
“We’re in a group with three clubs who have helped write the history of European football, three legendary clubs who play at some of the world’s great footballing theatres: the Johan Cruijff ArenA, Anfield and Ibrox Stadium. It will be a journey into the story of European and world football.”
It’s clear that the 63-year-old is looking forward to the meeting of some of Europe’s traditional power houses and in some real institutes of football.
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No matter what fixture is played in this stage of the tournament, every team in our group will be hoping that they can use home advantage in four unique, yet similarly intimidating atmospheres.
This should make for an exciting set of matches for the neutrals but a mucher tougher group in reality, than what it seems on paper for the Reds.
Because of the Qatar World Cup, all the group stage games will be concluded by the first week of November and so Jurgen Klopp will hope that our injury issues improve quickly.
With domestic cup, Premier League and now European matches all booked in our diary, the fixtures are going to start coming thick and fast.
We need to be ready to get as many wins as we can to give ourselves as great a chance as possible to claim more silverware this season.
Let’s hope this all starts with a big win against Bournemouth at Anfield.