Because of what he sees in this Liverpool squad, he is confident that success could be achieved…

I think we have shown that we can win football games so far this season, but there is still a long way to go. There are some of us who have the experience of winning both the Premier League and the Champions League. You need consistency, you also need a bit of luck along the way in terms of injuries, form and things like that. But so far we’ve had that, we’ve performed well and maybe even when we weren’t at our best we still found a way to win, which is good. But we’re only 12 games into the Premier League and four games into the Champions League and I still think there’s still a lot of football to play and there will be a lot of twists and turns. But when you’re doing well, you have to try to keep going and build that momentum. I think that’s what we’ve done quite well so far and we have to try to continue that because we know we have big games coming up and if we get results from them our position can be strengthened.

Whether a win on Wednesday would be an “important stepping stone” for the development of this team…

Yes, of course. Obviously we’ve played Real Madrid five or six times since I’ve been here and obviously we haven’t been on the winning side yet. But probably only a few of us were involved; It’s a completely different squad, a new squad that a lot of players probably haven’t played against with Liverpool against Real Madrid and it’s the same for them too – they’re a new squad and new faces. When it comes to these big games and you play against the best players and the best teams, of course you want to be one who is involved in the game and secondly, you want to get the result.

It’s likely to be the most-watched game of the week, and big players want in on it. And I think if we get the win we will be even better positioned in the Champions League. But you also beat one of your competitors, which is always nice. We are excited about this prospect. But we also know how good Real Madrid can be and we know they will come here full of conviction and confidence that they can get the result. Hopefully we’ll come tomorrow evening, we’ll be the luckier ones.

About his leadership in the squad and whether his importance is increasing…

There are probably few of us who have been as successful as we have been with the two major trophies. And we all have to get involved and help the new and younger players, because it can easily happen that you get too carried away and look too far ahead. But I think we have enough people in the locker room who won’t allow that. We’ll probably rely on me, Virgil (van Dijk), Mo (Salah), Trent (Alexander-Arnold), Ali (Alisson Becker) and Joe Gomez, people like that who have been there and done it, you can just do that say stay calm through everything and focus on the next game because that’s the most important thing. We’re fully focused on tomorrow night and tomorrow night at 11pm we’re fully focused on Man City and whatever happens there, we’ll be fully focused on Newcastle. That’s just how we work and how we’ve always done it. I think that’s what works best for our locker room and of course we are the key to that.

About Alexander Arnold…