As the number of football podcasts continues to grow especially as clubs jump on the bandwagon and release their official versions, it’s often hard to find new podcasts that are unique and deliver insight you can’t find elsewhere.

But there is one podcast I’d like to highlight for Liverpool fans or for those who are students of the game, and that’s “MP Red,” a fortnightly independent podcast from LFCNY.org

Hosted by Conor Brennan and Conor Murphy, the show is well-produced, offers intelligent debates, has a variety of different segments to interest many, but most importantly of all, is quite addictive and listenable.

Resident expert Simon Davies (no, not the Welsh international) is a breath of fresh air in the podosphere. He’s especially astute when he’s asked by the gracious Conor Brennan, with his dulcet Irish accent, to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Liverpool team in past matches. Davies does a superb job of dissecting those player performances and describing them in such a manner that’s easy for the listener to comprehend while keeping the topic quite interesting.

The panel discussion, for me, is the highlight of the show. Led by Brennan, Davies and fellow guests tussle in an intelligent debate over some of the hot topics of the week. Of course, it’s Liverpool centric but the answers sometimes stray into topics outside Liverpool FC, such as who was the greatest player in the world from the late 70s to 1982. Brennan argued that Kenny Dalglish was, while Davies interjected and gave his opinion about the incredible talents of Socrates, a Brazilian god that lived up to his name.

In the Kick In The Grass segment on the show, they had Clive Toye (the former NASL maestro) on, which was quite a coup. In episode 16, author Jay Mwamba was featured discussing the two Steve’s — McClaren and Staunton, and predicting that Ireland will qualify for Euro 2008, while McClaren’s England team will be sitting home instead of having qualified for the tournament.

As for areas of improvement, the two biggest are the name MP Red — which is a spin-off from the MP3. The name MPRed, while unique, doesn’t capture the creativity of the show and an improved name is needed, I believe. The other recommendation is to increase the frequency of the show. Once every two weeks is okay, but a weekly show would be preferable. If that’s not possible, having the show recorded and published sooner would be advisable. Episode 16, which is the current one, discusses the Liverpool 4-1 win over Arsenal, and was recorded on April 2nd. But by the time it was released, it was later in the week.

Other than those two areas of improvement, I would strongly recommend that football fans give MPRed a chance. The podcast is available via iTunes and here.