Arne Slot emphasizes that it is not important to finish at the top of the new Champions League group.
The Dutchman's Liverpool side can confirm their place in the last sixteen with a point against eighth-placed Lille at Anfield. But a Ligue 1 win and Barcelona dropping points against Benfica would also secure top spot for the Reds, who have won all six games in the revamped competition so far.
Still, Slot warned that despite securing a place as the top seed, there will be quality teams in the bottom half of the league due to the format of the fixture.
He said: “With this new format you think finishing number one is the best position to finish. But because it's such a strange ranking, because for example I think I'm right, when I look at Paris St-Germain, I think they have the most difficult team to face every week.
“So they are quite low on the table, which is not their quality, but they are low. So maybe you can face them if you become number one. So that is a disadvantage.
“So I don't look at the rankings in a way of, oh, if we're number one, we probably have the easiest team to face, because that's impossible to say. We want to win, but not from an idea that is likely to produce the best leader for the rest of the campaign.”
Slot confirmed that Diogo Jota will return in “weeks rather than months” after confirming the Portuguese forward will not feature.
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