Pep Lijnders was enjoying a ski break with his wife when suddenly duty called.
When you're Jurgen Klopp's trusted assistant manager you can never quite be sure what is going to come next, but helping to negotiate one of the most important transfers of Liverpool's recent history wasn't on his agenda that day.
Because while by early January the Reds hierarchy would surely have known that Sadio Mane had his eyes on a new challenge come the summer, the plan was to bring in a new left-sided attacker in place of the Senegalese club legend at the end of the season.
