He was smiling by the end, as you would have expected. There were three points to take his side closer to history, a celebratory goal for a local boy and another clean sheet.
In many ways, it was the perfect outcome in the first game back at Anfield for Jurgen Klopp and his newly-crowned champions, not least as it was glossed by 19-year-old Curtis Jones – who had signed a long-term contract 24 hours earlier – in front of The Kop.
The smile, however, only went so far. Klopp will have been happy with the result but there were many aspects of a flat performance that will have given him things to think about during the final three weeks of the campaign.