Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has admitted that his side will not be at their best in the Community Shield clash with Arsenal.
The Premier League winners are due to face the FA Cup-winning Gunners in the annual curtain-raiser at Wembley on August 29.
While it will be the first proper match for the two sides ahead of a gruelling campaign, Klopp has stated that his side will not be at the peak of their abilities.
"From a timing point of view, the Community Shield is in the middle of the pre-season, if you want. For us it's not the same," he told the Liverpool Echo.
"It will be a good game, I'm pretty sure. Arsenal is a good team, so it will be a good game, but both teams will not be the finished articles.
"How can we be after two weeks training again and stuff like this? But that's not important because both teams probably have the same situation, so it will be tough.
"The 22nd is the first friendly, 25th second friendly, 29th [is] then the Community Shield, so you see it's a pretty tight one immediately.
"But what I want to see from the boys, that we play our football again. That's it pretty much. And that we deal with the problems in the game in our way, that we create, that we prepare, that we are ready to defend together, that we have all the principles we worked on so long.
"You should see that we didn't meet a week ago for the first time in our lives. So we worked together for a while, didn't change a lot squad-wise. We want to see just our football."
