However, the Fir Park boss also fears his team must avoid defeat in the away leg of their first-round tie on Thursday to have a chance of reaching the group phase.

McGhee revealed there was a sense of "impatience" in the Motherwell camp ahead of the club's first European game for 13 years. Assistant boss Scott Leitch has been on a scouting mission to Nancy and McGhee has seen DVDs of their games.

And, while he recognises Motherwell will have to be at their best, the manager feels there is nothing complicated about their opponents, who sit 14th in Ligue 1.

"I think they are a fairly basic 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2," said McGhee, who has a fitness concern over Stephen Hughes but will take the former Rangers midfielder to France.

"They have a big centre-forward with a skilful centre-forward playing off him. They play with a bit of width but not out-and-out wingers.

"They have a back four with one full-back who likes to get forward and another who is like a midfielder.

"One centre-half is 6ft 5in and looks as if he can play, the other one is straightforward and aggressive.

"They are a fairly basic team who get the ball out from the back to the centre-forward and play off him.

"I summed up the strength and weaknesses earlier and if I can say something brief then, it's that we have nothing to fear."

However, McGhee knows there can be no repeat of Saturday's first-half show against Celtic when his side shipped four goals on the way to a 4-2 defeat.

"We have got to expect them to play well and if they do play well then we will have to play well if we want to beat them," he said.

"We need the same as we produced in the second half of the Celtic game and the Hibs game and Dundee United game before that.

"Not losing would be a good result. I think anything else possibly won't be good enough. I think we have got to go there and not lose."

McGhee, a member of Aberdeen's triumphant European Cup Winners' Cup team in 1983, is going into his first European game as a manager and he shares the excitement of the players and fans, around 3,000 of whom are expected to travel to France.

The former Scotland striker said: "There is excitement and impatience. We want to get on the plane and get over there. "We want to see the place, we want to train, we want the game and we want to see if we are good enough."

Meanwhile, the Motherwell boss brushed off suggestions their journey would be an inconvenience - their 49-seater plane will land in Southend on the way to Metz-Nancy airport.

"We are only going to northern France," he said.

"It's not as if we are going to Kazakhstan and stopping off at Tehran.

"It's two-and-a-half hours on a plane with a bit of refuelling."