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So, how was it for you?

Forget the trains, the tube, the inconvenience and the hangover for now. Friday night football was a rip-roaring success for Liverpool. One to remember, for sure.

Reds fans left Stamford Bridge singing about Sadio Mane, they will have spent their night marvelling at Jordan Henderson’s masterpiece, James Milner’s adaptability, Adam Lallana’s eight-litre engine or the smooth elegance of Joel Matip. It will have been a good night in London.

It’s early days, of course, and the arrival of a press release on Saturday morning stating that Liverpool have been backed in to 13/2 from 10/1 to win the Premier League should be treated with caution. We’ve heard that before.

Yet if you cannot afford yourself a touch of positivity after a win like that, then you may well be following the wrong sport. Football is about hope, it’s about ambition, it’s about dreams.

It’s also about players, proper players, and the evidence of the first few game of this season suggests Liverpool are collecting a fair few of those.

The evidence also suggests that, in Mane and Matip, Liverpool did some seriously good business this summer. £30m for the pair? Jurgen Klopp should have worn a mask and a striped jumper.

Those two signings are quite rightly being lauded, but the impact of another new boy against Chelsea should not go unnoticed.

At first glance, it wasn’t easy to see exactly why Klopp spent £25m on Gini Wijnaldum this summer. Decent player, certainly, but the kind of midfielder Liverpool needed? Not sure. The kind to deliver consistently impressive performances over the course of a season? To shine away from home? To help boss midfields up and down the country? Question marks.

After relegation with Newcastle, Wijnaldum knows he has plenty to prove. And though he is still settling in at Anfield, and certainly still adjusting to a different role to the one he was given on Tyneside, it has been a good week for the Dutchman.

He was good against Leicester, and even better at Chelsea. The more impatient supporters have been asking ‘what does he do?’ but they got their answer at the Bridge – he ‘does’ a bit of everything.

His reputation is as a late-arriving, goalscoring midfield man. His numbers in the Eredivisie, for Feyenoord and then PSV, are seriously impressive. Even at Newcastle, in a dire season, the goals came.

They’ll come at Liverpool too, in time. He’s already said himself that he should be looking at double figures. Confidence, that.

But in the meantime, in the cut and thrust of a full-blooded Premier League game, we saw what else he’s got in his locker. Energy, pace, strength, awareness, courage, skill – it was all on show.

Chelsea had the feted N’Golo Kante and the once-feted Nemanja Matic in their midfield, but the centre of the park belonged to Liverpool. Henderson and Wijnaldum were terrific.

They read the game superbly – 15 ball recoveries between them – tackled smartly and strongly, and made precious few errors in possession. Second balls? It felt like they won every single one.

This was disciplined midfield play, teamwork, selflessness. Wijnaldum barely got into the box all night, but he did the job his team needed him to do; get it, give it, show for the next pass, and don’t forget to keep an eye on the back door. Not once did he shirk his duties.

Indeed, it’s testament to how well that midfield pair did – and the diligence of a much-maligned back four behind them – that Chelsea barely had a sight of goal even after getting it back to 2-1.

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Klopp had four central midfielders on the bench, and with Emre Can fit again his numbers will be boosted further. As with his forward line, there is a selection dilemma on the horizon.

For now, though, Wijnaldum looks like he’s settling into the challenge on Merseyside. He’s been at big clubs before, he’s won titles, he’s played at a World Cup. He’s used to expectations.

He’s a smiley character at the best of times, but he was grinning from ear to ear as he got on the team bus on Friday night. No wonder.