Good afternoon and welcome to Eurosport's LIVE coverage of the first Merseyside derby of the season. Are you ready for some team news?

Liverpool kick off the derby to the usual fever-pitch atmosphere for this prestige fixture.

Balotelli, starting today, inhales helium balloon and hilarity insues. HILARITY!

No Sturridge or Sahko for Liverpool, but while it's apparent Sturridge couldn't get fit in time, in the defender's case rumours are rife over the internet. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but the popular opinion is that he won't be a Liverpool player in the long run. We'll keep you posted if anyhing concrete emerges about his omission.

What do the historical stats suggest for this game? Stat Attack investigates:

Roberto Martinez: "Sometimes you get situations where when you are so good as a team at something that you could take it for granted and then you get a little bit of misfortune in one or two actions early in the season and the ball ends up in the back of the net, and all of a sudden it seems the confidence is not the same and you don't defend with the same intensity. You look at the experience we have in the team, we haven't made any major changes in those positions. Now what we want to do is make sure we have more focus, better concentration, better communication and just face that challenge of getting back the standards that we have as a team defensively. It's not something that we're aiming for, it's something that we have, and it's a big difference. But clearly conceding the amount of goals we've conceded is not something we want to accept. "We'll always approach games to win games but it's important we don't become a team that concedes games cheaply."

Brendan Rodgers on Daniel Sturridge: "We'll be very happy to have him back and we hope that can be this weekend. We've got a number of injuries that we're going to give every chance to. He (Sturridge) is a player who's out on the field working. Him and a number of others we'll just assess nearer the time. But if he doesn't make it he won't be far off after that. He's someone that responds well to treatment. Obviously it's gone well but there are still a couple of days to go before the game. The most important thing is he's near to fitness. He certainly won't be match-fit, he hasn't played for a few weeks, but it'll be great to have him back because he's a wonderful player for us. He's a great reference for our team at the top of the field, his pace and movement and quality, which we saw the last time he played against Tottenham."

LIVERPOOL: Mignolet, Lovren, Gerrard, Henderson, Moreno, Manquillo, Lallana, Sterling, Skrtel, Balotelli, Markovic. Subs: Jones, Enrique, Toure, Lambert, Coutinho, Lucas, Suso /// EVERTON: Howard, Hibbert, Baines, Jagielka, Stones, Barry, McCarthy, Besic, Mirallas, Naismith, Lukaku... Subs: Joel Robles, Gibson, Eto'o, McGeady, Browning, Osman, Alcaraz.