Steve Bruce has revealed before Saturday’s trip to Liverpool with Newcastle that he tried to sign Virgil van Dijk while manager of Hull. Bruce’s visit to Anfield, where he scored two own goals on his Norwich debut, pits him against one player he did buy for Hull, Andy Robertson, and another, Mo Salah, who slipped through his extensive Egyptian scouting net.

“Virgil van Dijk: wow, what a player,” said Newcastle’s manager. “We all know how good Liverpool are up front but signing him and the keeper [Alisson] gave Liverpool the backbone they needed, just took them to the next level.

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“I could have taken him [Van Dijk] to Hull. I had dinner with Kenny Dalglish and the owner of Celtic, Dermot Desmond, in Barbados – I’m name-dropping now –and Desmond was waxing lyrical about the best players he’s had. He was saying: ‘[Henrik] Larsson is definitely, definitely the best I’ve seen play for Celtic in my ownership but what I can’t understand is nobody has gone for Van Dijk.’

“I thought: ‘That’s interesting, he’s seen a lot of football over the last 12 years,’ so I tried to get him before he went to Southampton but I had no chance.”

Bruce did, however, end up signing a young Harry Maguire from Sheffield United, the defender eventually leaving Hull for Leicester before this summer joining Manchester United. Even so, Robertson arguably proved his best buy by the Humber.

“Stan Ternent, my chief scout at the time, said: ‘I’ve just seen this kid at Dundee – we’ve got to take him,’” said Bruce, who has lost the midfielder Sean Longstaff to a freak ankle injury but hopes to have Andy Carroll back in full training next week. “We did our homework. I went to see him and we took him. It was a little bit of a gamble.

“I remember him arriving with his mum, holding her hand. To be fair to him, we had a couple of injuries, I threw Andy in and he had an unbelievable debut against QPR. He hasn’t looked back, has he?”

Despite Bruce regularly visiting Cairo on scouting missions he never attempted to sign Salah. “I took a few from Egypt,” he said. “But I missed him.”