Liverpool will discover who their Champions League group stage opponents are when the draw for the first round is made in Monoco this afternoon.
At 5pm (UK), the 32 qualifying teams will enter the draw with the games kicking off on the 15/16th of September.
As usual the draw is seeded, with the Reds placed in pot one ‘“ along with Manchester Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal – thanks to their recent European successes.
This means they cannot play the teams in the same pot as them in the first round of the competition and this includes European Champions Barcelona, AC Milan, Seville and of course they can’t face English opposition.
However, there is tricky opposition in pot two in the form of Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan, big-spending Real Madrid, CSKA Moscow, Porto, AZ Alkmaar, Juventus and Sotirios Kyrgiakos’ old club Rangers.
In pot three Liverpool will surely be hoping to avoid La Liga side Atletico Madrid, who beat them 2-1 at Anfield in pre-season, whilst the rest of the pot is made up of Olympiakos, Marseille, Dinamo Kiev, Stuttgart, Fiorentina, Bordeux and Besiktas.
The fourth and final pot has German Bundesliga Champions Wolfsburg, Belgian side Standard Liege, Israel’s Maccabi Haifa, FC Zurich of Switzerland, Russia’s Rubin Kazan, Romanian side Unirea Urziceni and APOEL Nicosia from Cyprus.
Join us on This Is Anfield later for news of the draw when it is made at 5pm.
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