SHORTLY before kick-off at the Fritz Walter Stadion on Saturday, a stocky, shiny-headed man strode purposefully on to the pitch, piece of paper in one hand and microphone in the other.

What came next is the kind of thing that only ever happens during pre-season.

Having been introduced to a warm response from the home supporters, our shiny-headed chum raised the mic to his mouth, scanned the sheet before him... and burst into an a capella version of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

It was curiously compelling, it had novelty value, it was a welcome distraction. What it most definitely was not, however, was the real thing.

And it was a therefore wholly appropriate note on which Liverpool ended their pre-season training retreat to central Europe.

How to judge Saturday’s defeat to Kaiserslautern – which followed a goalless draw against Grasshopper in midweek – when so few if any of the players who are expected to line up for the Premier League opener against Arsenal on August 15 have been involved?

Friendlies are a notoriously inconsistent barometer of a team’s prospects for the forthcoming campaign, but it has been virtually impossible for Roy Hodgson to gauge his new charges during the last two games.

And with the Europa League trip to Macedonia later this week, difficult decisions must be made ahead of the third qualifying round first-leg tie against FK Rabotnicki.

The club’s medical team are adamant none of the 14 players involved in the World Cup be considered for selection, leaving Hodgson to choose from the youthful squad that have been put through their paces at the picturesque training camp at Bad Ragaz in Switzerland.

That won’t happen.