New Liverpool head coach Arne Slot says he’d prefer to be at home for his first Premier League match and believes the visit to Portman Road will be special not just for him but for the newly promoted Blues.
Dutchman Slot has taken over from Jürgen Klopp this summer, the German having moved on after nine years at Anfield, and will take charge of his first competitive match against Town at lunchtime on Saturday 17th August.
"They've told me it's going to be 12.30,” former Feyenoord and AZ Alkmaar boss Slot told Liverpool’s official website. "From what I know, Jürgen complained a lot about this so probably they thought with Jürgen being out, let's put them at 12.30 again!
"No, it's different to a normal 12.30 because it's not after a game in Europe. Looking forward to it. A promoted team so it's going to be special for them as well.
"I think every team might prefer a home game to start with, but we're going to face Ipswich and we are looking forward to that.”
Regarding his preparations for the campaign ahead, he added: "In pre-season it's all about getting players fit and getting your game idea, your game model, into the players.
"We have quite a lot of training time with a few of them; and it depends how far players will go into the tournaments they are playing, how much time we have to work with these players.
"But like you already mentioned, the playing style will not be completely different. But it would be strange if we would do exactly similar things, because although I'm the replacement of Jürgen Klopp, I'm not exactly similar to him.
"So we'll try with the players who come in at the beginning, which is quite a lot of them already, to implement our idea of football as soon as we can.
"And when the rest come in a bit later, hopefully the ones who are there already can help us as a coaching staff so that they know what is being expected. Probably it will go as fast as possible because we have to be ready for the first game with Ipswich away.”