Liverpool vice-captain James Milner discussed the team’s progress in pre-season.

- I think it’s the same every season, it’s always tricky, you don’t know where you stand, how good the pre-season has been. Everyone is obviously all over the place, people are playing different minutes, different times of training, some players came back later than others.

It’s the same for every team and it’s never easy. It’s a complete new season, you’re not going to go into the season knowing exactly where you are. All we can do is what we’ve done every year: work as hard as possible, do the preparation as well as possible, get the fitness working.

It helps, the group we’ve had; we’ve been together a long time, with a few new additions obviously. Darwin doesn’t seem to have struggled too much settling in, with the goals he’s been banging in already. That’s great to see. All you can do is prepare as well as you can and hopefully you’re ready.

The amount of time we’ve been together, that helps. We’ve been through pre-seasons before, we’ve been through ups and downs, we’ve won trophies, we’ve lost trophies. That definitely helps going into a new season.