Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl heaped praise onto Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool ahead of his side's clash with the Reds on Saturday, calling coming to Anfield the 'biggest challenge in football'.
Saints have beaten the likes of Chelsea and Tottenham in the last few weeks, and also won at Leicester City a fortnight ago.
But their boss believes this will be his side's toughest task yet.
Hasenhuttl said: "In general every team can lose games, and also Liverpool had a few tight games, but in the end they were always the winning team.
"If you want to take something we must be mentally better than them, which is not so easy - and also tactically, and [they are] also a very, very committed and organised team.
“So it’s the biggest challenge you can imagine in football at the moment, but this is exactly what we want to have."
And while Hasenhuttl is convinced the Reds will go on to big things this season, he believes his side will put up a good fight over the weekend.
He added: "If you see [Liverpool] play, how strong in every position they are, then everything is possible.
"They always seem to stay hungry, and this is what you have to be if you want to be a top team. It’s a good challenge.
"It would be normal that we lose, but this season is everything but normal for us; not normal in the positive and not normal in the negative way.
"I don’t expect a normal game from our side at the weekend. We are in a good shape, we have a few problems with injuries but the squad is concentrated on working.
"We know about the difficulty of this challenge, but we need this challenge."
