The skipper is one of the few remaining veterans of our Cup Winners Cup defeat at the hands off Belgrade five years ago, and he believes that the Serbian team will be just as dangerous this time round.
"I imagine the Partizan team has changed a lot since the last time we were here,” Shearer told the Evening Chronicle.
"But we are expecting an equally tough game, if not tougher. It will be very hostile and there will be a full house tomorrow night.
"However, we have come through our pre-season reasonably well and we have had some decent results.
"We cannot wait to get cracking."
The other survivors of our 1998 meeting with Partizan are Shay Given, Gary Speed, Nobby Solano and Andy Griffin, although Nikos Dabizas also played but is not in the squad for Wednesday’s game.
On that occasion we won the home leg 2-1 thanks to goals from Shearer and Dabizas, but went out on away goals after a 1-0 defeat in Belgrade. Both Partizan goals came from penalties conceded by David Batty, with Vuk Rasovic the scorer.
As you can see from our line-up in the two games we should have a far better chance of winning this time round.
First leg line-up: Given; Watson, Pearce, Charvet, Dabizas, Speed, Glass, Lee, Shearer, Andersson (Solano), Ketsbaia. Unused subs: Perez, Barton, Pistone, Guivarch, Gillespie, Albert.
Second leg line-up: Given, Griffin (Albert), Pearce, Charvet, Dabizas, Speed, Solano, Batty, Shearer, Ketsbaia, Glass.