Champions League, first qualifying round: Rafael Benitez has warned his Liverpool heroes to forget about last season's Champions League triumph and concentrate on not being caught cold by Welsh minnows TNS at the first hurdle of the defence of their crown.

That may seem almost laughable when you consider that 49 days ago Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard was lifting the Champions League trophy after a memorable night in Istanbul when AC Milan were beaten on penalties, and the Anfield club took Europe's top club competition for the fifth time.

But the meticulous Liverpool boss is aware of the pitfalls posed by Welsh village side TNS Llansantffraid, a club who are champions of their country and hell bent on embarrassing their mighty opponents in this season's first qualifying round first leg.

The first ball in the British Open and the Ashes series has still to be hit, but Liverpool will be back in action against the Welsh Premier League's only full-time club intent on getting past six potentially tricky qualifying games to reach the lucrative group stages again.

Benitez warned: "I have lots of memories of Istanbul, but we cannot think about the past. You have to work for the future and we must prepare properly for every game - like this one - because if we are caught sleeping and dreaming about the past we will be punished. I don't like to approach a game thinking in terms of David against Goliath and that David normally wins.

"I prefer to talk about playing against a good team who have won their league. We know we are favourites but we need to be careful because in football you never know what can happen.

"I have seen videos of them and studied two reports. We know they have a good target man and a second striker who scores lots of goals. They will be good in the air and they will be aggressive, for sure."

TNS like to make the most of their image as a village team from mid-Wales, but they are a lot better than that. Owned and run by multi-millionaire Mike Harris and with players who have tasted life at league clubs - several at Liverpool and Everton - this is a team who have frankly outgrown the Welsh league, much like Barry Town did a few years back before a lack of progress to a higher level and eventually finance, slowly destroyed them.

But Benitez can only see obstacles and problems. He may have world class stars like Gerrard, Fernando Morientes and Djibril Cisse to throw at the Welshmen, but he said: "We have only had one game, at Wrexham, and we have been training morning and afternoon for more than a week now. But it is not easy to play well at this stage.

"We know it will be like a final for TNS, but for us we do not know which team to chose. We are signing players and some have been with us only a week while others have been away with their national teams after the Champions League final and have not been training as long as the rest of our squad.

"Only half of the squad has trained for two weeks, so I do not know what players and what team I will select. We will not have our usual pace, but we must play using our quality because we will not have the physical condition so our ability is the only way to win the game.

He added: "We know how important this game is, because if we want to play in the group stages then we have to win these qualifiers. For them it will be their final, so that is why we must be careful.

"We are favourites, but then so were Chelsea, Juventus and Milan when we played them last season. In the end they didn't win against us so we must be very careful how we approach this game. These games can be very difficult, I have experienced such things in the Uefa Cup before and I recall ties against very difficult Turkish sides early in the competition.

"But at least we are very close, in miles, to TNS and speak the same language! But if they start with a high tempo and we can't score early we could get nervous. We know we have to be calm and to know that we have more quality, and we need to show that quality on the pitch."

Meanwhile, Luis Figo is no closer to joining Benitez at Liverpool after Real Madrid reported a lack of progress on transfer talks which now look close to collapse.

Madrid vice-president Emilio Butragueno stated that there had been no fresh developments regarding Liverpool's interest in the Portuguese winger.

Liverpool thought they had negotiated the free transfer move of Figo away from the Bernabeu, on a wage of around £65,000 a week. But Madrid have since insisted on a £2 million fee, prompting the Merseysiders to cool their interest.

PROBABLE LINE-UPS

LIVERPOOL (4-4-2): Reina; Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia, Riise; Potter, Gerrard, Hamann, Zenden; Morientes, Cisse.

TNS (4-5-1): Doherty; Baker, Evans, Jackson, Ruscoe; Beck Leah, Ward, Lawless, Toner; Wood.

Referee: J Van der Velde (Belgium).