Dries Mertens has played at Anfield once before. It was not an occasion to inspire fear nor a game that has prepared him for the roar of the Kop tonight. It was an insipid dead-rubber Europa League encounter eight years ago for a Utrecht team that were already out of the competition.

“My strongest memory is that they have a sign saying ‘This is Anfield’ and everyone was talking about it, so I was thinking it’s very big, you know,” he recalls. “I came through the tunnel and I asked, ‘Where is the thing?’ and they said you missed it and I hadn’t noticed it. So, in the second half, I’m looking at this small thing and asking, ‘Is this so special?’ ”

Much of