Roy Hodgson today exclusively revealed that summer signing Milan Jovanovic will make his debut in Saturday’s pre-season match with newly-promoted Bundesliga outfit Kaiserslautern – a game you can watch exclusively live on Liverpoolfc.tv.

The Reds boss confirmed the Serbia star and Sotirios Kyrgiakos will both start against Marco Kurz's side.

Here's the interview in full:

Roy how do you reflect on the training camp overall?

We have enjoyed it and the players have worked hard here. I'm sure we've made some strides towards showing the players what type of football we want them to play and how we want them to perform overall. I'm now looking forward to going back home and meeting the more senior players who have returned from the World Cup.

We've still got one more game to play before we go home so how much of a step up is Kaiserslautern compared to Grasshoppers?

Well it should be quite a big step up because the Swiss league can't really compare to the Bundesliga. Kaiserslautern have just been promoted to the Bundesliga because last year they were in the Second division. They are a traditional club like ourselves and they've got a big history in Germany which goes back many, many years. I'm sure they are going to be really enthusiastic ahead of the start of the Bundesliga season. One would expect them to be stronger than Grasshoppers and they are also in a pre-season phase whereas Grasshoppers had just started their league campaign. They had one eye on their game this weekend which is a big derby game for them. Like ourselves they were interested in using a lot of players. I don't  quite know how Kasierslautern will approach this game.

We've said it before on this trip but for these boys it's another great chance for them to show you what they can do isn't it?

Absolutely. Quite a few of them would have been very happy with what they did against Grasshoppers and I'm hoping they will reproduce that on Saturday. We are working them quite hard of course so that's another factor because we haven't been preparing them for these games, we've been getting them ready for future games. If I had really been interested in getting them prepared for these pre-season games then we would have worked them a lot less hard than we did in training on Friday for example.

Click on the play button below to watch the interview

Could we see Jovanovic and Kyrgiakos in action on Saturday or are they still a little bit off a return to action?

They did take part in the World Cup and came back a little later and I think we need to be a bit more careful with them than with some of the younger players. But having said that I think they can play and they will be happy to play. They will start the game and we'll see how long we can keep them on for.

You mentioned about going back to Melwood and meeting the World Cup players - how excited are you to go back and meet your full squad and start preparing for the season with them?

I'm looking forward to it that's for sure. I don't know if excitement is the right word but I'm certainly looking forward to it and hoping that I get the same response from them in the training sessions that I've got from these players here. If we get that intensity in our training sessions then I'm hoping that we'll be able to push on very quickly and reach the level of fitness we need earlier maybe than some other teams, because we have these Europa League matches to play.

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Have the medical and conditioning staff you have out here been liaising with the people at Melwood in terms of the work that your World Cup players are doing at the moment, and are you keeping in close contact?

Absolutely. We sent the two main people from Peter Brukner's staff back to Melwood to work with them, and we've continued to work here with the other people. So Phil Coles (Head of Physical Therapies), and Darren Burgess the fitness trainer have gone back to work with these players. We get a daily update on what they've done overall, what training they have done, and how hard they have worked, so we are kept fully in the loop.

Does the real work in terms of preparing for the start of the season begin next week?

Yes it does, although, as I said at the start of this interview, some strides have been made. I certainly don't regret the time we have had here. It would have been nice in an ideal world to have had everyone with me from the offset but we knew that wasn't going to be possible. It's not just ourselves in that situation as quite a few teams have started pre-season training early and they've had to do that without their World Cup players. There's no complaint on my part and I think the training camp here has been as good as it could possibly be.

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We know there is a trip to Macedonia next week for the first leg of the Europa League qualifier. Do you have difficult decisions to make in terms of what team you can field in these two games?

Yes, it's a very difficult decision because; one, it's a question of what levels people have reached and two, the effect it will have on the future by putting them into games early when maybe they haven't reached the right level of fitness. These matches are important if you want to continue in the Europa League and we've got to be very careful that we don't therefore use players that the Sports Science team are convinced are not ready to take part. If we did that, then come August 14 or the middle of September or October, we could  suddenly find ourselves with a lot of injuries and really struggling to get points in the Barclays Premier League.

Is it case of looking at the bigger picture then and having a lot of dialogue now with your medical team to make these decisions?

Yes. It's a little bit of a fight with them to some extent, in order to try and get them to free up more senior players because their view is very clear that all of these players who are coming back to Melwood just after the World Cup shouldn't play in either of the two games. My point of view is that I want to go through in the competition and I might need some of these players, so there's a lot of compromise. I fully respect their opinion and in an ideal world I wouldn't even for one minute discuss it with them and I would take it at face value. If our first game was on August 15, I'd take it on face value that they don't want me to use these players in any friendly matches, and instead continue working with them and build up their level fitness. But of course we've got official matches now and that's the difference.

Are you expecting two tough games against FK Rabotnicki?

Yes. I think all the games in Europe are tough and I don't think there are any easy ones. If we had been drawn against Shrewsbury for example or Huddersfield no-one would have thought that is a simple game to play. You see these teams playing regularly in cup games against Premier League teams and doing very well, so people don't know what Macedonian football is like. These teams could be the equivalent of Championship teams for all we know, but the fact we know nothing about them doesn't mean we should dismiss them as being no good.

Finally, there's lots of speculation back home about different players but is there anything imminent?

No, nothing doing. I'm very conscious of the fact that when I do interviews with Liverpoolfc.tv, this goes out to our most ardent fans. I'm very anxious that when they hear something from me they'll know there is some truth in it and they'll know that it's worth hearing. I can't possibly stop all the rumours and the speculation or the agents using journalists in order to promote their players. That's a fact of football life and we can do nothing about it, but I'm very anxious myself that if I say we are interested in X, Y or Z, it's of true interest and our fans will know that.

Watch our clash with Kaiserslautern exclusively live on this website on Saturday from 2.15pm. Click here to sign up for an e-Season Ticket>>