This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

It is the Anfield rap.

Neil Atkinson with Ben Johnson, Patty Fitzsimmons and Neil docking to have a chat

about, well, predominantly Liverpool's first pre- first preseason friendly but they're only

doing two against Stuttgart obviously Salzburg on Tuesday at 3 p.m. and we are now just

six days away from the community shield and I'll go to you first on this

one Ben I think the sheer madness and lack of convention around this season is

about to hit people there's a good piece by Jonathan Northcroft in the Sunday

Times today where he references

that all the top sides will have to play 35 games in 109 days over the course of the middle of the

season. That's to come for us. There is the very fact the Community Shields next week and then all the players go off on

international duty in different places before reconvening. There is the idea

that you're only getting two preseason friendlies. Everton managed to get a valiant 3-3 draw up against Blackburn

yesterday and fair play to them for that.

So all of this is a reminder that it's going to be a mad, mad year

and that game in a rain sudden pitch that I think

Yeager can clock might have said you know what let's not bother with it.

He goes ahead with it because he needs to get 45 minutes a competitive football and two sets of

players legs.

Yeah it is going to be a strange season and I think the other thing to notice that it's a strange

pre-season in that the players aren't coming back after four, five weeks off. They're not all drifting back at different times. They're all coming back at pretty much the same time with two weeks break so they're all fit and I think you see that

yesterday when he picks the team he picks at the start you never really ever see that in

...