Thommo in Asia: Day Five

It was good to see the lads in action for the first time last night and I thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable match. Sometimes it's difficult to pick up the tempo in a first game but I thought we did well.

It's all about build-up to the new season but I thought the players were great. One good thing is everyone knew they were having 45 minutes so all put the effort in and gave a good account of themselves, full of effort. Everyone put a shift in, and no-one more so than Joe Cole.

I'm looking at it and I can always tell if someone has been keeping themselves fit over the summer and Joe Cole looks like he has come back with a mission. It was nice for Conor Coady to score his first goal as well.

It was a young side in the first half and we passed the ball quite well, even given the Jubilani ball which didn't always go straight to feet. Then in the second half it was a more experienced team and the interesting thing from my point of view is we conceded goals right before half time, after the team had played well and got tired, and then again we lost two goals in the final minute.

The Chinese side did very well and managed to score three times. All in all I thought it was a good night with players like Carroll and Ngog getting off the mark.

After the game we had a flight in the middle of the night and it's a long time since I have done that. We took off at 1am and landed in Malaysia at 4.30am. One good thing is we got straight off the plane with the immigration formalities already completed, so we could go straight onto a coach and away. There were fans still at the airport though, to see us get on a coach and drive away.

When we got to the hotel I thought it's too late for anyone to be here as the time wasn't far off 6am, but there was about 300 fans going mad inside the hotel and cheering the lads.

The security team had a system in place which got the players to the lifts, but the fans were within touching distance and me and Rushie stood to one side and we could see smiles on the faces like Andy Carroll who probably couldn't believe what he was seeing. Raul Meireles was giving big waves and smiles as well to the fans. It was brilliant to see. The lads were tired but were still acknowledging the fans and that was nice.

It was a lighter session in the gym this morning because we had arrived so late. Then as they were resting I had a very interesting day.

Kenny had his press conference with a couple of players and Malaysia FA officials, and then after that one of my commitments was to host an audience with Kenny and Ian Ayre. I had never done anything like this before. When I got in I thought it would be just a few people, but there must have been a dozen TV cameras and a hundred press people in there.

We wanted it to be fun. We asked some serious questions but also had a laugh as well and I think everyone enjoyed it.

We talked about Kenny coming back after 20 years away but also about Ian Ayre as well, who used to live in Malaysia, who has friends and family back here and I am sure they are proud that he is now MD of the club.

I really enjoyed the session, it lasted for about half an hour and I hope the others got as much enjoyment out of it as we did.

Then came the main event of the day when we set off for an open training session and we had all heard stories about how many fans were going to be there. What no-one had realised was that going to the session was going to be an ordeal in itself because the traffic was terrible. We had a police escort and it was interesting to see how they shifted cars out of the way. It was very impressive.

As we arrived you could see an area of the pitch and it looked busy. But we had no concept really of what it was going to be like and when we walked out it was quite incredible.

I have seen everything in football, I know the passion out here for Liverpool - but even I was taken aback by what I saw tonight. It shocked me so imagine how it made the players feel. Some of them have never played in front of that many people before - and this was a training session! It showed them the importance of what Liverpool FC is about worldwide.

Before the lads arrived on the pitch Rushie and myself went on a lap of honour around the track to get the crowd going and they went wild. They were throwing shirts and scarves for us to sign. It was impossible to sign every one but we did as much as we could. If we'd done them all we'd still be there now. I'm quite pleased that at 57 years of age the fans still remember me.

I was asked to do a running commentary of the training session, which is something I did years ago in Hong Kong so I think someone blew me up and asked me to do it again. This time I'm a few years older and wiser, so I agreed again.

I tried to make it enjoyable but after a while it dawned on me that Steve Clarke, with whistle in mouth orchestrating the team, and Kenny and the other staff trying to get information across, maybe wouldn't appreciate me continuing for the full session. I have been an assistant manager and I know you have to make yourself heard to the players, It was nice for the fans for me to do that, but the important thing was the training session.

So I took my leave, interviewed Rushie and Kenny Dalglish and then left the field a little bit early and everyone understood the reasons why.