Europa League
Venue: Wals-Siezenheim Stadium Date: Thursday 16 September
Kick-off: 1800 BST Coverage: Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and live on ESPN

Richards helped Manchester City reach the Europa League quarter-finals in 2009

By Chris Bevan

Manchester City defender Micah Richards says his side will "take the Europa League seriously" this season as they try to end a 34-year trophy drought.

Big-spending City begin their campaign against Red Bull Salzburg on Thursday.

"We want trophies," Richards told BBC Sport. "So we want to do well in every cup we are in, domestic and European.

"I think we can make a big impact in the Europa League. With all the new signings we have made, we have a really good chance of winning it."

Richards says qualifying for next season's Champions League remains City's main target, after they narrowly missed out on Europe's elite club competition at the end of the last campaign, but he does not see the Europa League as a distraction.

He was part of the City side that reached the quarter-finals of the competition under previous manager Mark Hughes in 2009, and feels the current squad is good enough to progress even further this time around.

"Last time out, we didn't really have that much experience - there were a lot of players in the team that, like me, had not played in Europe before," Richards explained at the premiere of 'Blue Moon Rising', a film about a group of fans who followed City last season.

"I learned a lot from that season. European football is very different to Premier League football - it is a lot slower for a start.

"We had some hard games then and we have got some even harder ones this time, including Juventus away which we are all looking forward to.

"But now we have got some top-drawer players, a lot of whom who have just come back from the World Cup. It's a competition we have always taken seriously and we are all raring to go in Austria."

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