For the next while at least, Jurgen Klopp will be experiencing a series of firsts at Liverpool.
His first press conference impressed the journalists in attendance, his opening game against Tottenham yielded a point and now tonight it's time for his first foray into the aura of a European night at Anfield.
However, his team won't be involved in the Champions League, rather he leads Liverpool into action against Russian side Rubin Kazan tonight in the Europa League group stage.
It's a competition Klopp has participated in before, with both of his former clubs Mainz and Borussia Dortmund when it was still called the UEFA Cup.
In 2005-06, Mainz, who had been promoted to the German top flight two seasons before, made it into Europe for the first time under Klopp's guidance, breezing through the first qualifying rounds before holders and eventual UEFA Cup winners Sevilla stopped them in their tracks, beating them 2-0 on aggregate just before the group stage.
Klopp would be back again three seasons later, this time with Dortmund. Their stay in the competition would be short, as Udinese knocked them out on penalties in the first round.
Of course, Dortmund had yet to become the Bundesliga-winning machine that Klopp would eventually turn them into, with the back-to-back titles coming a couple of years later in 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Interestingly, those seasons of title-winning glory did not translate into strong European runs as his high-energy, pressing unit fell at the group stage of the Europa League in 2010-11 and the same stage in the Champions League the following year.
Indeed, in the latter campaign, Dortmund's results went off the rails in the opening part of the season as they lost three of their first league games and also lost domestically either side of Klopp's first Champions League game in charge, which came against Arsenal in a 1-1 draw. Apart from one other win, they went on to lose all their other group games, yet enjoyed excellent form in the Bundesliga, where they did not suffer another defeat.
Klopp speaks to UEFA president Michel Platini and German chancellor Angela Merkel after the 2013 Champions League final (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
A closer look shows that domestic results around Champions League match nights were not that bad, with the only low points being consecutive 1-1 draws in early December 2011, either side of a defeat at home to Marseille. Otherwise, a particularly productive period a couple of weeks earlier saw them beat Bayern Munich away and local rivals Schalke at home in the Bundesliga, either side of a loss at the Emirates in Europe.
In the 2012-13 season, Klopp's side made a famous fairytale run to an all-German Champions League final against Bayern Munich, beating Shakhtar Donetsk, Malaga (in dramatic circumstances) and Real Madrid (brilliantly) in the knockout stages, having topped a group unbeaten that included Real Madrid, Manchester City and Ajax.
But domestically, Dortmund would struggle to match previous campaigns as they fell away, finishing 25 points behind Bayern in the Bundesliga, raising questions about whether Klopp's gegenpressing system and smaller squad could fight on two fronts.
Interestingly, Dortmund's best run of league form in the first half of that season came in the period between the end of the group stage and the start of the knockout rounds in Spring; they won four in a row before a heavy 4-1 defeat at Hamburg, four days before their first knockout round tie in Ukraine against a strong Shakhtar side.
Although they did find form again in the Bundesliga in March and April of that season, that came during a run of favourable fixtures against weaker sides, and after they had already fallen well off the pace domestically.
So what does that mixed bag of results tell us about Klopp's approach to European games? Well, statistically, they had far less possession on average in Europe during the campaign where they made it to the final; they averaged 46 per cent according to WhoScored.com in that season's Champions League, in comparison to 54 per cent domestically. That decrease in possession was more suited to Klopp's favoured approach, while the amount of tackles his players got through per game remained similar across both competitions.
During the previous campaign, they were far more willing to hold possession in Europe with an average rate of 52 per cent, which suggests that playing a style that allowed his side to surrender possession had an effect the following year. They also made the most tackles per game in the 2011-12 Champions League campaign (where they were knocked out in the group stage), with an average of between two or three more per game than the successful European run of 2012-13.
Their run to the quarter-final in 2013-14 also saw them stick to a sub-50 per cent possession rate, although they were knocked out a round earlier last season when they upped their possession rate by a whole six per cent.
If the stats are to be believed, Klopp's best runs in Europe came when his team averaged less than 50 per cent of ball possession, got through fewer tackles and when domestic form was not at its brilliant best. These are all factors for Liverpool fans to keep an eye on this season.
Liverpool v Rubin Kazan kicks off at 8.05pm tonight.
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