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Many have come to dread Brendan Rodgers' press conferences recently, with the manager often seeming to have witnessed completely different games from the rest of us, being far more upbeat than results would dictate, and offering platitudes rather than honest assessments.
As such, it was no surprise that he was pleased with a point away to Bordeaux in Thursday night's Europa League opener, and this time, the optimism isn't entirely misplaced. The Liverpool side at one point boasted an average age of 21,7 years and still came close to picking up all three points.
Predictably, the youthfulness of the team was Rodgers' prime topic of discussion in his post-match press conference:
"We had so many young players in the team – and some of these players were playing their first games – so I thought it was very encouraging.
"Coming away in European games is always tough to do, but with the lack of experience we had and a lot of the young players, I was delighted with that.
"I was so proud of them tonight.
"A lot of our players are actually out on loan, but Jordan Rossiter and young Pedro gained more control as the game wore on.
"Jordan came off with cramp and Cameron comes on and slides into the position well.
"You take those two and you look at Jordon Ibe who is only 19 on the side, Joe Gomez is 18, so there is great encouragement there for young players and the supporters when they see them giving that type of performance."
Equally predictably, recent bench warmer Mamadou Sakho was indomitable in his return to the starting XI, and according to Rodgers, may have earned himself another start for the weekend:
"Sakho was immense at the back, in his defending and his choice of pass.
"He knows he’s had to be patient and his attitude has been first-class. We won our first few games, our performance was good, so it was difficult up until the international break for him to play.
"But he’s trained very well and remained very professional, done his extra work on his fitness and you see tonight he has got his rewards for that.
"He certainly comes into the reckoning for the weekend."
It remains to be seen if "immense" carries more weight than "outstanding" has tended to do in recent times when Norwich arrive at Anfield on Sunday, but it is nonetheless nice to see Sakho's contribution to the team get the recognition it deserves.
