New Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino is relishing the prospect of facing Liverpool on the opening day of the season.
Chelsea will welcome Jurgen Klopp’s side to Stamford Bridge on August 13 to kick-off the new campaign. It will be Pochettino's first competitive game in charge at Stamford Bridge.
Liverpool will arrive in West London, boosted by the arrivals of Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai. Mac Allister joined from Brighton & Hove Albion last month, while Szoboszlai completed his £60m move to Anfield from RB Leipzig over the weekend.
Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson have arrived at Stamford Bridge as Pochettino looks to bolster his attacking options following Kai Havertz's move to Arsenal. Mateo Kovacic, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Edouard Mendy, Kalidou Koulibaly and N'Golo Kante have also left the club as part of a major overhaul of the squad.
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Liverpool finished 23 points ahead of Chelsea last season, and Pochettino, speaking in his first interview as Chelsea boss, has warned his new side that they will be in for a tough afternoon when the Reds visit.
He said: "It’s going to be exciting, but while it’s close, it’s also still far away. First, we need to meet the players, start work, and then the tour in America, which is going to be unbelievable to meet all the fans.
"We will be ready for the first game against Liverpool, and it is going to be so exciting to have the first Premier League game at Stamford Bridge.
"We will face a team that’s very good in Liverpool, which I know very well from the past. Now it’s important to visualise ourselves at Stamford Bridge.
"We know very well the stadium, and we know with the fans we will create a good atmosphere. The objective is to win, because football is about winning.
"We will have good times, create good relationships, have a nice environment and relationship with people, but the most important thing in the end is to win. If you win, it helps develop all the other things.
"Football is about results; how you achieve that is different because we are people that care about the way we achieve the results. But in the end, we want to win, be competitive, be animals that want to compete every week and in every game.
"But we need to translate before on the training ground and to train in this way. We need to be really tough to try to create that mentality and the feeling that we can beat anyone."
