Roy Hodgson admits his Liverpool youngsters will face a 'massive' step-up in class against FK Rabotnicki on Thursday night - but has backed them to rise to the occasion at the Philips II Arena.

The Reds boss admits he would like to have included some of his more senior stars for the Europa League third qualifying round clash in Macedonia but is confident the 18-man squad that has travelled to Skopje can get his Anfield tenure off to a positive start.

"It's a massive step up," Hodgson told his pre-match press conference in Macedonia. "You've only got to look at the room here and all the TV cameras - there is great interest in the game and the Macedonian fans will bring a lot of passion to the game.

"It's a step up you have to experience, you can't talk people through it. If you are going to become a top player at a club like Liverpool and play European football for many years, then you need to be able to handle it.

"Whether they can or not, we'll find out tomorrow."

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He added: "It would be very harsh to write off a player's chances of making it on the evidence of a game. It's more an opportunity to swim rather than sink. We have put our fate into the hands of many inexperienced players and we can only hope that because they have talent they can get us through this tie against an experienced and well-versed team in European football, like Rabotnicki."

Prior to making the trip to Skopje, Hodgson had suggested he could be tempted to bring the likes of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher back into the fold early.

However, the boss admitted that was never a realistic prospect.

"We were never close to that because they have only been training for four days," he said. "It would have been complete folly to play 90 minutes of football in an important competition in difficult conditions. It was never going to be possible.

"We've pressed one or two back into service who were in a few days earlier than the others. In an ideal world we would not use any of the players who played in the World Cup, but frankly we were not in a position to do that."

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Given the inexperience of some of the players who travelled, the boss also revealed that he will make a late decision on who will skipper the side.

"That's not been decided," he said. "It's been Lucas in the last few games but now we have Skrtel and Agger, so it's quite possible we might change that.

"In Switzerland it was Lucas Leiva because he was the most experienced player with us , but we also have other options now."

Quizzed as to what he had learned about Rabotnicki, Hodgson said: "As much as you can find out in a week because that's when we found out we'd be playing them.

"We had reports of their games against Mika from Armenia. I also have a report on when the club formed and how it is a very successful team in Macedonia, especially since the turn of the Millennium.

"They have a lot of experience of European football, so we are expecting it to be a tough game."

He added: "All the competitions we play in are important to us. This is the first competitive game I've had with the club and it would be nice if I could play with what we feel is our strongest team, but obviously we can't.

"But it's still a very important game and hopefully the players we have the confidence in to play in the game will do a good job."

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