Liverpool head coach Arne Slot is unsure how much benefit there will be to finishing top of the Champions League table.
If his side make it seven wins out of seven at home to Lille and Barcelona fail to win at Benfica, the Reds will have an unassailable position with one match still to play.
The obvious advantage is avoiding the play-off round, which they will do with a point from their final two matches, and going straight to the last 16.
But beyond that the new format means it is difficult to predict what other extras can be gained other than financial, with top spot earning £8.5million in addition to £1.6m for reaching the last 16 and bonuses for every game won in the group stage, as the likes of Manchester City, Paris St Germain and Real Madrid are all scrambling to make the 24-team cut-off just to get into the play-offs.
“With this new set-up you think that number one is the best position to end up with but because it’s such a strange league table, for example if I look at PSG every week I think they have the hardest team to face so they are quite low on the table, which does not reflect their quality,” said Slot.
“So maybe if you end up number one, you can face them. That’s a disadvantage so I’m not looking at a league table in a way, ‘if we are number one we probably have the most easy team to face’, because that is impossible to say because of this weird, I don’t mean in a negative way, format.
“So being on top maybe doesn’t tell you that you’re the best team and being number 24 doesn’t tell you that you’re number 24 in terms of quality. It has a lot to do with the teams you’ve faced.”
Slot goes into the game – and a number of fixtures afterwards – without striker Diogo Jota, who exacerbated a muscle problem at Nottingham Forest last week after scoring the equaliser and will be out for a few weeks.
With almost impeccable timing, Darwin Nunez came off the bench at Brentford on Saturday to snatch victory with two stoppage-time goals, having not scored in the league for over two months.
Slot challenged the Uruguay international to find a level of consistency which would elevate him to be among the world’s elite.
“I think the most difficult thing in football is for a team, but also as an individual, to find consistency,” he said.
“Only a few players in the world are able to be at the same level every three days in a row and then there’s a big group of players that are able to play very good many times, but not every single time.
“I think he’s one of the players that belongs to the group that is good many times but the next step for him would be nice if he can go into the bracket of the five, six, seven or eight players in the world that are outstanding every three days.
“I do know we have also one or two players that are very high standard every three days so it’s a nice challenge for him to go to that group of players as well.”
Lille are eighth in the table, having beaten both Real and Atletico Madrid and drawn against Juventus, but manager Bruno Genesio admits the trip to Anfield is another level.
“Tomorrow night is the biggest challenge of this season and we have prepared ourselves mentally, physically and tactically for it,” he said.
“It is not for nothing that this team is first in the Champions League and in the championship. It is a complete team.
“We can only admire what the coach and this team are doing. They are consistent.
“We’re going to play our game, (but) there will inevitably be times when we’re going to have to do things we’re not used to doing.”