"All the big names are there. There's a lot of quality. When I first came here, there was the expectation of Manchester United versus Real Madrid or Inter Milan, or Juventus. That's what you want, and you've got a tournament now with all these names."
When asked about the over-hyped 'battle of Britain' against Rangers he replied:
"That's unfortunately going to dominate it. If we're not careful, we could get sidetracked. We need to get this England and Scotland thing out of the road.
'I was in Scotland recently and the headlines were ridiculous. 'The biggest game in Britain... I hope we don't get sidetracked by all that. Of course the atmosphere at Ibrox will be marvellous, but I'm trying to ignore the England-Scotland thing. I just want 10 points and I don't care where they come from. I do think this Champions League format might be better. For the last few years I've thought the first stage was a bit dead, the thing only got going after Christmas. This time it should be exciting from the word go.'
And Gaz Nev:
"Since 1999, we are short of where we would want to be in Europe. Up to that point, we had improved every year.
"It was as though we were climbing a mountain and eventually we reached the top but for one reason or another we haven't been able to get back there.
"Last year was a different feeling to the previous two years when we got knocked out. It was more energising.
"It wasn't that we enjoyed losing, more the fact that we knew we had been beaten by a great team after two great matches which had been played in exactly the right way.
"Against Bayer Leverkusen, the previous season we under-performed, as we did against Bayern Munich the year before and Real Madrid the year before that.
"Last year we didn't have the same feeling. It was a great night of football and something that we thought 'right, we have to get to their standard'."
