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

Very good afternoon and welcome to this Friday edition of the Blood Red podcast.

Coming to you as ever from the Liverpool Echo's officers here in the heart of Liverpool City Centre.

The Reds will have the opportunity this weekend to move back into the Champions League

qualification spaces for Saturday at least if they can overcome West Ham United at Amfield.

Before that though, the draw has been done for the last 16 of the Champions League

and we have discovered that Liverpool will be on their way to Istanbul, the scene of one of their greatest ever victories to face Galatasaray in the last 16.

And we also know who they will face if they get through as well.

We'll join me to discuss that and the fallout from today's press conference is the Liverpool Echo's chief Liverpool FC writer, Ian Doyle. Ian, how you doing? Got a bit of a cold, otherwise, okay. Any Lemsips on the go? Yes, I had one before. Yeah, I brought some as well. I think I'll wait till I get home. Yeah, it was a mild ailment compared to my colleagues.

Yeah, I was going to say, a small cold deserves a certain degree of sympathy, but unfortunately, we are without Paul Gorse today, who is under the weather, shall we say?

He is, yeah, he's not here, although he is working. And obviously Theo's not been here for a little bit,

so we wish them both well in their quest for full fitness. Hopefully they'll be back for the last few weeks of the season. Do you think they've been gone long enough to constitute a whip around in the office? No. Is that just going too far? That's, come on. Everybody likes a laugh on a joke, but you're just taking so far there.

When it comes to colds, I swear by a thousand milligram vitamin C one a day. So something to take on board. I have me orange every single day, so drink of orange. So. Sound Pellarion. Exactly, yeah. So it's, you know, just because I'm warm out, run down, all these games. You've got a lot to do and we're a bit short on staff, to be honest. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, that's the vitamin C covered off today, viewers. Let's get down to the Champions League draw first. So, I think you wanted Atlatico, Ian, to be honest, but you've got Galatasarai. Yay.

What do you think?

Yay.

Yeah.

Madrid is half the distance.

Istanbul.

I had managed to miss that one in the group stage, but I've obviously been to Istanbul,

quite a league stage, sorry, but I've obviously been to Istanbul quite a few times. Yeah. 2005 I was there. There was a game. Yes, I was at that one. 2019 in the Super Cup final. Yeah. I saw Liverpool play in 2006 against Galatas, Ryan Luz. I saw Liverpool play Bissippa S and Luz in 2007. I've seen them playacetas and Luz in 2015. I didn't, obviously, didn't go to the one this season. And I've seen Everson Luz in a friendly to Fenabachi in which somebody got shot in the foot, which was an interesting, apparently so. We heard it, and we thought, what was that? I didn't think anything of it. Then the next morning we saw in the paper the two Fedenabachi fans had had an argument and one of them had shot another one in the foot. Don't you just hate that when you're having a bit of a dispute and your gun goes off in your pocket? Exactly, yeah. You don't want that, you know. It did settle the argument, though, to be fair. You know, that was case closed. But yes, Liverpool, I play Galatasaray.

And if you're talking from purely football perspective, it's probably the draw they would have wanted. I saw Galatasaray at the last 15 minutes of normal time, then the extra time against Juventus on Wednesday, and they were absolutely dreadful. Like, proper, full-on, what are they doing kind of thing?

Basically, for anybody who didn't know, they won the first leg 5-2, playing it. They're playing away in Juventus. They were at 1-0 down by half-time, but then Juventus had a player sent off. Lloyd Kelly, you should never have been sent off. Yeah, that was games-blown stuff. Yeah, basically it meant that for the last 42 minutes of the second half,

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