When you are out for a year you go through stages, says Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain — and they sound like the stages of grief. First, you can’t compute it, then everything hits you. Then acceptance. And finally you start over — which, to raucous joy at Anfield on Friday night, he did when he bounded on as a substitute in Liverpool’s 5-0 romp against Huddersfield.

What he gained on the sidelines was perspective. “When you’re 18 you think football will last for ever and suddenly you’re 25. And in the Premier League you’re lucky to make it past 32, 33,” he says. Oxlade-Chamberlain always had an inkling of what he wanted to do, post-playing, and while recuperating from a serious knee injury he crystallised those thoughts.