Henderson, left, and Ball found plenty to talk about in a meeting that gave the Liverpool midfielder respite from negative headlines

Jordan Henderson had been rather ambling up to a restaurant in Liverpool city centre but his eyes lit up when he glimpsed the blast from his past sitting in the window. He offered Kevin Ball a thumbs up and, once inside, a bear-hugged embrace. From then on, the stories never stopped flowing.

Such as the time Henderson had to pull on the boxing gloves and square up to one of his team-mates as Ball, his former youth coach at Sunderland, jokingly sought to settle a training ground spat.

“Training was always 100 per cent all out,” recalls the Liverpool captain. “Me and a lad called Robbie Weir [now of Leyton Orient], who was one of the older lads, were going at it — he has