Liverpool assistant Pep Lijnders says some of the club's recent signings will feature in their Carabao Cup 3rd round tie away to Lincoln City. 

Jurgen Klopp's assistant was on media duty ahead of the Premier League champions' trip to the LNER Stadium.

Lijnders was keen not to reveal too much about the Reds' starting XI, but dropped strong hints that Diogo Jota and Kostas Tsimikas would be involved.

"We have to see how a few players are," the Dutch coach said, "What we try to do is for each player, what is good for him.

"It’s these weeks where we have to look at that as well. At this moment in time, it’s difficult to say exactly what we are going to do."

Regarding Jota, Lijnders said, "Diogo is on a similar level technically as our front three. He has so much future in his feet and we want to give him the inside pathway here to make the next steps as well."

A lot more possession

On the prospect of facing the top flight champions, Lincoln boss Michael Appleton said, "There are definitely no nerves, it’s more excitement."

He added, "We want to be able to showcase what we’re capable of, but you can only do that if you go into the game quite aggressively, on the front foot and trying to compete, rather than just being happy to be there and be passive.

“It’s OK saying that, but doing it is another thing. The reality is that they’re going to have a lot more possession than we are.

“As you’ve seen in the opening games, that doesn’t bother us too much because I do feel we’re a threat on the counter-attack.

“As long as they have possession in the areas we want them to have possession in, that won’t bother me too much.

“The issue is that they’ve got some seriously good players. If they start picking up the ball around the edge of our box, we’ll have problems."

Liverpool have won the English League Cup a record eight times, but have only been to the final once since Jurgen Klopp's arrival.

It's a trophy Lijnders says they very much want to return to the Anfield trophy cabinet.

"We want to attack this competition, that’s for sure," he told his press conference.

“That always starts with the first game in front of you and that’s tomorrow, so we want to attack that game, show our hunger, show our desire, put a team out who represents our club – with big, big names involved, big, big players involved. And a lot of talent as well.

“I think we passed the phase of opportunities, we passed the phase of talent. The boys who play tomorrow are really part of our squad, they take an important place in it. We want to attack and that’s what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

Injuries

One player who definitely won't be involved against the Imps is Liverpool captain, Jordan Henderson.

Lijnders confirmed the skipper picked up a minor muscle issue in Sunday's 2-0 Premier League win away to Chelsea.

Defenders Joel Matip and Joe Gomez will also be absent, but are nearing their respective returns.

"Joel will probably only come back during the international break; that will take some longer time, some more time," the assistant said.

“Hendo, hopefully he will get back next week, but tomorrow for sure is too soon for Hendo. Maybe [back for Arsenal], yeah, hopefully.”