It hit you as soon as you stepped out of Liverpool Lime Street railway station about midday. The sky was blue but the rest of the city was red. Very red.
Captain Virgil van Dijk, an honorary Scouser to use his own words, had called on fans to come out in their colours. And how they responded.
Everywhere you looked, this football-mad city was a sea of red.
This day was an attack on all the senses.
The smell of pyrotechnic flares and smoke bombs stalked the air and clung on to clothes.