When they were kings, when they were rulers of England and Europe, when they carried all before them, Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah, looked to Jordan Henderson as their leader, the captain who drove them with a relentless hunger that never dimmed.
Van Dijk and Salah have stayed at Anfield and won fresh honours but on Saturday night, the odyssey on which Henderson embarked two years ago brought him up against the friends and teammates he won titles with for the first time.
Henderson’s travels have taken him to Al-Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia and to the once mighty Ajax of Amsterdam and there were times before he arrived at Brentford in the summer when people thought his career was fast ebbing away.