Liverpool eye 300 celebration at Utrecht

FC Utrecht will look to continue their promising run at home as Liverpool FC's 300th UEFA club competition tie takes them to the Stadion Galgenwaard in UEFA Europa League Group K.

Previous meetings
• The sides are meeting for the first time in UEFA club competition, and this is Utrecht's maiden experience of an English side.

• Liverpool have reason for optimism, with their 12 games against Dutch clubs having ended W8 D3 L1 (W3 D2 L1 in the Netherlands). They have not lost in five away games against Dutch opposition since going down 5-1 at AFC Ajax in a European Champion Clubs' Cup second round game on 7 December 1966.

Match background 
• Utrecht are unbeaten in four European home games, and have won the last three without conceding a goal. The last foreign team to win a game at the Stadion Galgenwaard was FK Austria Wien, who won a UEFA Cup group stage match 2-1 on 16 December 2004.

• That defeat marked the end of Utrecht's only previous group stage campaign; they finished bottom of their 2004/05 UEFA Cup section without picking up a single point.

• Having won both of their UEFA Europa League qualifying away fixtures this season, UEFA Europa League group stage debutants Liverpool have put a three-match barren spell on their travels behind them.

Team facts
• Ton du Chatinier represented Utrecht as a defender for the whole of his ten-year professional career, and has not strayed too far from the club since, serving as a youth coach, caretaker manager and assistant boss before being given sole command at the end of 2008.

• A schoolteacher and semi-professional defender, Hodgson won four Swedish titles – with Halmstads BK and Malmö FF – and a Danish crown with FC København as a coach. Switzerland, Inter, Blackburn Rovers FC, Udinese Calcio, the United Arab Emirates, Viking FK and Finland are among his many and varied employers.

• Hodgson's only previous competitive trip to the Netherlands came on 18 March 1987 with his Malmö side coming to AFC Ajax looking to defend a 1-0 first-leg lead in a UEFA Cup Winners' Cup quarter-final. They lost 3-1 in Amsterdam.

• Liverpool have two Dutch players, forward Ryan Babel and former Utrecht star Dirk Kuyt. The latter scored 51 league goals in 160 games for the Dutch club from 1998 to 2003 before leaving to replace Fenerbahçe SK-bound Pierre van Hooijdonk at Feyenoord.

• This is Liverpool's 300th UEFA club competition game, with the previous 299 leaving them with the record W169 D64 L66.