This is the Blood Red Podcast from the Liverpool Echo, giving you the inside track on all the big talking points from Anfield. Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of the

Liverpool.com podcast I'm your host most Stewart and I'm joined as ever by

James Martin and Ben Bolchak and this week well is the really only one thing we could talk about this week

We're not going to talk about that rather disappointing Derby that happened at the weekend because it's Champions League week.

Yes, the Champions League returns and the Reds are hoping to go one better this year in some

rather familiar surroundings of Istanbul.

Before we go any further, James, I can't even say that word or even see it written down

without conjuring beautiful memories.

Surely, after the last year's disappointment it's written for

Liverpool to return to their spiritual home and take the trophy. Yeah and the fact

it's been delayed as well delayed twice in a sense in terms of when it was going to be hosted there,

the various pushbacks, because, well, first because of COVID, and then it was going to be in Russia.

So you thought, well, maybe it's going to get moved to Istanbul but they just pushed them all back.

So yeah, it's twice could have been in Istanbul, now it's back in Istanbul, and

Liverpool have just been waiting for the right opportunity to win it, been waiting for Istanbul.

And yeah, it's hard to resist that narrative, isn't it?

It is hard to resist it and I don't think I'm ever going to try.

So we can just continue on with it, I think, but we are going to have to assess exactly how

difficult that's going to be we're going to look at who Liverpool got in their group

we're going to look at the other English teams and how they match up and then we're

going to look at some of the other big hitters as well of the

competition to see exactly where Liverpool stand but then obviously the

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