Eighteen months of misery, and finally some light

Jayden Danns has endured the kind of injury run that tests a young player's character to its absolute limit. Serious hamstring trouble, a back problem that ended a potential loan move to Sunderland, another setback during his comeback with the under-21 side, and then an absence that kept him out of pre-season entirely, the list reads like something you would not wish on anyone. The 20-year-old has been through it, and then some.

Yet here he is. Danns was named on the bench for the third consecutive Champions League fixture as Liverpool beat Villarreal 4-3 at Anfield on Tuesday evening. For a player who has not featured for the first team since September of last year, that is meaningful. It is a signal, quiet but clear, that the club has not lost faith in him.

What Rob Page is saying about his progress

U21s head coach Rob Page has been managing Danns carefully through Premier League 2 and the EFL Trophy, and the message coming out of that setup is genuinely encouraging. Danns featured in the draw at Rochdale and has appeared in all five Premier League 2 matches this season, including the first half of the dramatic 1-0 home win over Reading at the weekend.

Page is being measured about how he deploys the striker, and for good reason. "His fitness is good," the U21s boss said. "It was always part of the plan that some games he will play and others he won't. Sometimes he will play 45. It depends on what his training load has been throughout the week. If he has done enough work during the week, it might just be that he is getting game time. It's not about 90 minutes, it's about game time to get his sharpness so that he is ready when he is called on."

The key line, though, was the simplest one. "He's ready to go," Page added. "It's just like with any of these top athletes, you have to manage the load throughout the week and be sensible about it." Sensible is exactly the right word after everything Danns has been through. Nobody wants to see another setback.

What comes next for Danns

The path ahead is straightforward enough in principle, even if the execution requires patience. Page's plan is to build Danns' minutes gradually, keep his training load under control, and have him sharp enough to step into the first-team picture when the opportunity presents itself. That presence on the bench in Europe suggests Andoni Iraola is at least keeping him in his eyeline.

Danns will be 21 in January, and this feels like the season where he either stakes his claim or his future at the club gets reassessed. With first-team minutes hard to come by at any level for the best part of a year and a half, every training session and every outing for the U21s is building towards something. The question of when that something arrives at senior level is one worth watching closely.