Philippe Coutinho waited to chat with three Liverpool stars following Aston Villa's Boxing Day defeat by the Reds - although not with individuals he played with while at the club.
Coutinho played only four minutes in the 3-1 loss after coming on for Leon Bailey late on at Villa Park. But many of the Liverpool stars were pleased to see their former teammate, who made a point to hang around in the tunnel after the game.
But the three players Coutinho was seen chatting intently with were stars he never shared a dressing room with while at Liverpool, instead, he spoke with his Brazilian compatriots Alisson and Fabinho, as well as Thiago Alcantara.
Villa's Douglas Luiz, who also represents Brazil, was seen chatting with the group too.
Coutinho has played only 33 minutes since Unai Emery took over from Steven Gerrard as Aston Villa boss, missing the first three games of his tenure through injury.
"Coutinho had two or three training sessions when I arrived here," Emery told Birmingham Live ahead of the Liverpool defeat. "He trained very good, very good. He was very excited to try to show me and show us his best qualities.
"The injury was in a bad moment for everybody, for him, for the club, for the team. Now, he is training every day and I am seeing him really training well.
"I expect of him the best Coutinho possible. For him, on Monday it is a special match playing against Liverpool and I think he is going to be in the squad.
"He is not ready to play 90 minutes, but I am looking forward to seeing him on the pitch, in the matches and with his quality he can help us a lot."
Emery was disappointed with his side's performance following the defeat by Liverpool.
He said: "We did a great effort. It's so hard for us. I think the first half we started well. We created chances. We didn't score and conceding two goals from set-pieces isn't normal because we are working well on the set-pieces. The result was a little bit tough for us.
"The second half we needed to keep, again, our game plan and to try to get chances to score and opportunities to come back. We played for 30 minutes very well. We scored, we created chances and we were better than them, I think.
"Their transition is amazing as well, they have players fast like [Mohamed] Salah and Darwin Nunez and they created a few chances. Our goalkeeper saved one or two but they scored the third and the match was finished."
