Gerrard's total solution after the U-turn

Liverpool talisman committed to the title cause as Welsh minnows prepare for mismatch of the century

Steven Gerrard received a welcome as warm as the weather after the U-turns and S-bends of his mental tossing and turning, and played for the first 45 minutes. So did Jamie Carragher, who also signed a new four-year contract on Friday, and new signings Boudewijn Zenden and goalkeeper Jose Reina, before Rafael Benitez made 10 changes during the second half. Whether the ageing Luis Figo is now added to the payroll depends on Real Madrid dropping their unexpected demand for a £2m fee.

Throughout the dark days at the start of last week, when Liverpool seemed resigned to losing their captain, the club's chief executive Rick Parry clung to one faint hope: "Stevie never said 'I want to go'," he revealed, "only that things had become difficult." The difficulty, it transpired, was a feeling of not being wanted, revealing the sensitive side - over-sensitive, as it turned out - of a player whose naturally furrowed brow frequently makes him look more miserable than he has any reason to.

As a regular England international and captain of his boyhood club, for whom he had recently held aloft European football's greatest trophy following an inspirational personal performance, negotiating a new contract for even higher wages should hardly have been a matter for trauma. All Gerrard needed to do was re-run the memories of that extraordinary night in Istanbul six short weeks earlier, on which he sat in the official press conference alongside Rafael Benitez and announced: "How can I leave after a night like that and all the nights I've experienced this season? I'm going to put that [a new contract] to bed and you'll see a different player next season."

By last Tuesday, with negotiations having broken down, Anfield was having to come to terms with the fact that there would, indeed, be a different player wearing Gerrard's shirt next season - and that he would be sporting a blue one in West London.

While denying a serious falling-out with Benitez on the training ground, he admitted they had had "a few heated discussions", the gist of which is not difficult to divine. On one side, the manager was entitled to remind him of the commitment made in Istanbul and point out that for any player with an admirable desire to win more trophies, the European Cup was not a bad start. From Gerrard's side of the table, questions will have been raised about why, if he was so highly valued, a six-figure weekly salary was such a problem and whether the latest crop of Latin imports really justified Benitez's stated intent to build a squad to break the Big Three's monopoly in domestic football.

Like Carragher, Gerrard is conscious of having a hole in his trophy cabinet where a Premiership medal should sit; unlike his friend, he clearly cannot countenance the thought of ending his career without one.

If the reaction of Liverpool supporters to last Wednesday's dramatic about-turn has generally been one of relief, there are mixed feelings among the sizeable contingent of them in the dressing-room of the club's next opponents. Players like John Leah, TNS's captain, their leading scorer, Marc Lloyd-Williams, and midfielder John Lawless - who has an LFC tattoo and went to Turkey for the Champions' League final - cannot quite decide whether facing Gerrard makes the two matches all the more thrilling or even more daunting.

"It makes our job a little bit harder," Leah admitted. "He's a world-class player who's single-handedly helped Liverpool get where they are. But to walk out at Anfield in front of a full house tops my career, with them being European champions as well, it's a dream come true."

The dream is of a different sort for the club's manager, Ken McKenna, another Merseysider, but one of the Blue persuasion, who says: "I've the utmost respect for Liverpool, but I'm an Evertonian and if there was any outside chance of beating them, I think I'd become a local hero, making up for all the things they've done to Everton over the years." He has even signed Tom Rooney, cousin of Wayne, as a non-contract player, but the striker will find it hard to displace Lloyd-Williams and Michael Wilde, scorers of more than 60 goals between them last season as TNS did the Double in Wales.

Overall, it is a young side, proud to include five youngsters from the club's scholarship programme, though not an inexperienced one, having competed in European football for the past five seasons. The Uefa Cup a year ago brought two games with Manchester City, at the Premiership side's new ground and then Cardiff's Millenium Stadium, in which they were only 1-0 down at half-time on each occasion before succumbing 5-0 and 2-0.

McKenna, for all his Evertonian dreams, is playing down the chances of a sensation. His insistence on high standards was evident on Friday, however, during training, which he commanded from start to finish with stop-watch in hand, Arsène Wenger style, demanding at even the simplest of drills: "Have a bit of pride in what you do."

There are more Scouse accents than Welsh ones at these sessions, which take place close to the banks of the Mersey, at the home of Vauxhall Motors in Ellesmere Port. Not until next season will they move to a school nearer the Oswestry headquarters of the TNS company, whose ebullient managing director Mike Harris decided some seven years ago to take over the local team and controversially change the name from Llansantffraid. "We're on track for what we want to achieve," he says, "though we don't spend what we haven't got, even if the manager hates me for it."

A new ground is planned to meet Uefa's requirements for a capacity of 3,000 all-seated, though attendances will have to increase ten-fold to fill it; last season's average home gate was 333. Bring on Steven Gerrard and the champions of Europe for what McKenna calls "probably one of the biggest mismatches in history".