The formal announcement that dropped onto Liverpool's official website on Wednesday evening was the first forward pull on the curtains of a glorious era under Jurgen Klopp.
The confirmation that vice captain James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Naby Keita would be joining Roberto Firmino in leaving the club this summer was not unexpected, but that made it no less bittersweet for supporters who have come to broadly recognise all four as important cogs in a glittering and trophy-laden period.
Between the quartet, they turned out 965 times for Liverpool between the years of 2015 and 2023 and that figure would surely have clocked over the 1000-mark had it not been for the well-documented injury issues that blighted Oxlade-Chamberlain and Keita, in particular.
