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

First of all, you're going to, obviously you've announced today that Virgil Van Dyke has signed a new long-term contract.

Can you just give us your reaction to that good news for the football club?

Yes, great news.

The good thing about this signing is that we know him already, that we used him before already quite successfully and

we are really happy that he's happy here. And

he more so after that obviously very difficult last year that he is back on track, trains with the team and prepares his very successful, hopefully very successful future of this club.

So yeah, absolutely great news. Imagine we would have to buy this boy now. So thank God we only had to give him a new contract.

And as you prepare to kick off the new season, how much are you as a group all looking forward to being back in front of, well nearly full stadia and back in front of fans?

Yeah, we had, we got a little sense of obviously how it is with fans again last Sunday and Monday.

So it was absolutely great and changed the whole game.

The little difference is now that we obviously play at Norwich and not in Anfield and they will be exactly as desperate as our people

were before they went back to Enfield so we have to we are better ready for a proper

fight there that's what we are preparing for all the time now because the competition starts and the pre-season friendlies are over.

So it nice to try a few things to test here and there, but now all the other stuff is there again.

We play for points, we play for our supporters obviously for fulfilling expectations, dreams, whatever.

So that is a difference, but we had the longest pre-season for a while, especially the longest

pre-season with a big, big squat together. a lot of players were involved in the full preseason

some came back at least early enough some came back a little bit later so but now they

are all here and it's a good situation and that's what you want at the end of a preseason that you have a few choices to make and then to start their season with the first game and we know the intensity will now be

completely different and we think in a moment we are ready for it but we have to

prove that on Saturday.

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