What are the creditor’s rights after liquidation?

Assume a company is dissolved or liquidated. After this has formally happened, a creditor appears who was not known at the time of dissolution/liquidation claiming to be owed money by the now defunct company. Can they make a claim against anyone like the former directors/owners or liquidators, or do they just have to write it off? It's a purely theoretical question that I was just wondering about, so I'm making the assumption that the creditor definitely has a valid claim against the company but that it has no guarantees with anyone other than the company i.e. no personal guarantees from the directors that they'd be paid.