Jürgen Klopp promised Liverpool will be fully prepared for Maribor, Sevilla and Spartak Moscow as the manager admitted it 'feels good' to be back in the Champions League.

The Reds ensured their spot in today’s group-stage draw in Monaco by beating Hoffenheim 4-2 at Anfield on Wednesday night, which capped a 6-3 aggregate success.

Subsequently, the draw pitted Klopp’s men alongside the clubs from Slovenia, Spain and Russia in Group E – and the boss is relishing the chance to compete at Europe’s top level again.

Read on for his immediate reaction from Melwood…

On his reaction to the draw…

The draw was exciting – to be part of it is obviously really special. We watched with a few of the lads together. There are groups with Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus and Real Madrid, and not to get them is of course more good than bad. But I don’t think that after this long way we should think about the opponents. We have to go and prepare. With Sevilla, there is an open bill, I would say. But we all know how good they are in European competition. Moscow is a long trip. And Maribor, in this moment you don’t know a lot about them; a lot of people would underestimate them, we will not. So we don’t think about the opponent, we just think about the competition. We’ll analyse and take everything seriously – we want to go as far as possible. But it’s the Champions League, so that means they all earn our 100 per cent respect, how we earn 100 per cent respect from them. That’s what we will show and hopefully we have a few really good games, which we 100 per cent need.

On preparing for the ties…

We will see. We will plan it probably from tomorrow on. We will take as much information. Maybe we can send the guys there. The Russian league has played seven games already, so that’s probably an advantage for them – they have rhythm and all that stuff. Spain had one matchday, I don’t know about Slovenia. We’ll probably send people there and watch them; we can get enough games of theirs, that’s not a problem in the world of football. We will know everything until we play them and we will be prepared 100 per cent.

On how to approach a Champions League group stage…

I have a few games. Away, home… in the group stage you need to get each point and each result you can get. That’s what we think about. For sure, we need to make sure that Anfield is a really difficult hill to climb for other teams. But that doesn’t mean that we go to other stadiums and think a point will be enough. I don’t think it makes sense to think like this. We are not the favourite in the tournament, we are not the favourite in the group – we are just a challenger. The challenger should be 100 per cent concentrated and give everything, and that’s what we’ll try to do.

On the buzz of being back in the Champions League…

We all know how big the pressure was yesterday. Now we are in the Champions League. We will first of all prepare the team for the Arsenal game. Then all the players are around the world and hopefully they can come back healthy, that’s the main thing. Then, in the moment when we know who we will play first, we will go for it. There are a few weeks until then; we will need the time and we will use it. It just feels good, I cannot say differently. Now we can start the preparation.

On whether other teams will fear Liverpool…

In this moment, for sure. But it depends on our performance. We had a nice sign last night – the first 20 minutes were probably part of the best pieces of football I was ever part of. That was really impressive. But we have to replicate this – we have to do it again and again and again. Then we can be successful. That’s good news but hard work also.

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