The Premier League champions take on FA Cup winners Palace in the traditional season curtain-raiser at Wembley on Sunday (10.08.25) and the coach feels that his team are in for a tough test at they look to start the campaign with silverware.

Slot said: "It's nice if you can start the season with the chance of winning something because normally you have to play numerous games before you have the chance of winning something.

"Normally you win something at the end of the season, now we have a chance to win something at the beginning. Unfortunately, we face a very good Crystal Palace team who've been very difficult to win against for us.

"Counter-attacks, set-pieces, long-balls to [Jean-Phillipe] Mateta and individual quality of their forwards ... Palace will hit the ground running again, it is still the same team. A good challenge for us to start the season."

Liverpool are interested in signing Newcastle striker Alexander Isak but Slot refused to discuss the player in his pre-match press conference.

The Dutch manager said: "As you know from me and it's the same for a lot of managers, you never talk about a player who isn't yours.

"I can talk about Hugo [Ekitike], who we signed recently and has done really well until now.

"We are really happy with the squad we have and there is every reason to be happy about that because we won the league last season.

"OK, players left but we've brought players in as well and youngsters are doing good. At this moment in time, Darwin (Nunez) might leave but things are not signed yet so we need to wait a few days before that's completely done.

"I think we already have a lot of attacking power in our team. When I think about Cody Gakpo, Federico Chiesa, Hugo Ekitike, Mo Salah, Jeremie Frimpong who can play as a right winger, Florian Wirtz who can play as a left winger, so I already feel I have a lot of attacking options.

"But as always as a club we are always looking at the chances in the market but that can also be in the midfield and the last line."