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I am encountering some problems filling these space in this exercises:

A: Have you seen Matt recently?
B: Matt? He’s in Canada.
A: Really? How long has he been in Canada?
B: About a year now. ______ (I / see) him a few days before he went. He had been unemployed for months, so he decided to try his luck somewhere else. ______ (he / really / look forward) to going.

My answer was:
I had seen
Because you are saying that something (seeing Matt) is happened before something-else (his departure), for this reason I thought was correct to use the Past Perfect, to arrange the events happened in their properly timeline.
He had been looking forward
Based on the exercise's context, it makes me think that Matt (1) has been thinking about it for a long period of time, (2) it happened in the past, therefore, once again I thought the Past Perfect would have matched correct here.

Instead, the book says:
I saw
He was really looking forward

Could I ask you guys why my answers are wrong? Thank you.

ColleenV
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ilMagnifico
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    If the speaker had said 'Matt got in touch with me soon after he arrived. I hadn't expected to hear from him so soon because I had seen him a few days before he went', the past perfect would have been used because the two incidents were related. It's hard to explain - it's just one of those things that native speakers do automatically. – Kate Bunting Apr 13 '20 at 10:10
  • Related (but not really a duplicate) Canonical Post #2: What is the perfect, and how should I use it? – ColleenV Apr 13 '20 at 14:26
  • "I saw " is used because "before" is used in the sentence, which makes the sequence clear, so past perfect is unnecessary. It doesn't say that he had been looking forward to it for a long time, it just says he was looking forward to it. This happened in the past, over a year ago . – anouk Apr 13 '20 at 21:12
  • @anouk about the 1^ question, okay. So basically every time there is an adverb of time in the phrase, and I'm not sure which one to use between Past Simple and Past Perfect, the Past Perfect it's not necessary, isn't it? – ilMagnifico Apr 14 '20 at 19:20
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    "before" and "after" make the sequence of events clear, so with these past perfect is optional and you can use the past simple. – anouk Apr 14 '20 at 19:27
  • @anouk Okay, thanks – ilMagnifico Apr 14 '20 at 19:35

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