This is the Blood Red podcast from the Liverpool Echo, giving you the inside track on all the big talking points from Anfield.

Hello and welcome to this week's Liverpool.com podcast. I'm Matt Addison, Rich Garner and Michael Plant with me once again.

Before we get stuck into the episode, don't forget to get the best discount of your NordVPN plan.

You can go to NordvPN.com forward slash blood red. Our link gives you four extra months on the two-year plan and there's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link with all of the information is in the podcast episode description box below. On today's show though, we are going to talk a little bit about Liverpool returning to Premier League action of the weekend against Nottingham Forest.

We'll talk a little bit about centrebacks and transfers as well, even though the summer window feels as though it's just closed.

It's not that long until January, and I'm sure all of that talk will ramp up once again.

But let's keep it to this week for the time being, Michael, some big decisions for

Honest Lot to have made across this international break. In some ways, it kind of felt like

the wrong time for Liverpool with the Villa game and the Real Madrid game, but very much

back down to Earth with that trip to Manchester City. So it's been an important period, I think,

before an important period for Liverpool on the pitch,

for Honest Lott to just think about how he might want to use his Liverpool squad across the next

few weeks. Yeah, he's got a lot to think about across, you know, the course of the first 18

games of the season, but I would say particularly in the last seven games, he's got quite a lot

to think about in between the October and November international breaks

because I think that, well, obviously there were issues still with the performances.

I actually do think it contained probably Liverpool's three best performances of the season so far.

So I do think there's plenty to reflect on positively as well, actually, from the last couple of games.

And it's important that he gets things right because, as I mentioned on last week's

podcast, this spell now between November and March is the most crucial run of the season,

really, because it's the most condensed.

A load of fixtures, there's not going to be an international break for about five months.

...