In truth, all this dysfunctioning is becoming a bit of an embarrassment.
Just when Jurgen Klopp thinks his Liverpool side is all revved up again and ready for action, it keeps failing to rise to the occasion. Don’t think it’s not playing on his mind either. One look at the German’s unusually pained expressions yesterday told a story of a man who has suffered one flop too many.
But he’s not exactly the panicking type. On the contrary, Klopp took a very philosophical view on it yesterday as he prepared for another big date under the lights against Rangers. “If it can happen to Messi and Ronaldo then it can happen to anyone!”, was how he explained it when asked why his players have suddenly started losing it when under pressure to perform. It’s a confidence crisis which could have seen coming, never mind Klopp himself.
And it’s left his all-star side blushing uncomfortably in ninth place in the English top flight - and facing a fight just to make it out of Group A and into the knock-out stages of their favourite competition after an opening night pounding in Napoli.
Hot on the heels of dropping another two Premier League points at home to Brighton on Saturday, Klopp is now asking himself some of the toughest questions he’s faced during his time on Merseyside.
Honestly, this has never happened to him before. Or maybe it has. Klopp explained yesterday: “We’ve had conversations like this already this year before, especially after the Napoli game when we all realised, ‘OK wow! That’s our real low point. We have to change things quickly,’.
“As always in life, when you spot a problem you think about it and think you have the solution. Then, of course, you expect the solution to be instant. Bang! Sorted! But, in football, that’s never the case.
“Even if we had won the Brighton game 3-2 - it would have been a completely different feeling obviously - but with similar problems.
“That’s why we just have to keep going. Yes, we have to improve, we have to play consistently better, we have to defend better and attack better. Pretty much everything.
“But it was only two years ago when we were in a really similar situation for different reasons. We lost all our centre halves and had to find solutions.
“We lost our game completely. Nobody could recognise us any more. We just wore the same shirts but couldn’t react as quickly as people would wish. But we found a way out because we worked on it and that is what we will do this time.”
Klopp was then asked if this sudden collapse in self belief makes tonight’s visitors from across the border more dangerous than would normally be the case.
He replied: “Rangers would be dangerous in any situation. People ask, ‘How can it happen that these players are not full of confidence?’.
“Do you think Cristiano Ronaldo at this moment is on top of his confidence level? He was for ages the best player in the world and now things are not going his way and it’s not exactly the same.
“That happens to all of us. Lionel Messi wasn’t exactly the same last season because these types of things are really important.
“You have to work for it. You must keep doing the little things to take a step in the right direction and then in the moment you are really ready, then it’s back. That’s what we are doing.
“That’s how it happens, especially collectively. Maybe in individual sports you can fight through it by yourself. But, in a team sport, we all must do it together and that makes it a bit more complicated.”
It’s all a matter of perspective though. Just because Mo Salah’s not operating at the peak of his powers, for example, doesn’t mean the Egyptian is not capable of doing untold damage to a Rangers defence which has had confidence issues of its own since the season began.
And yet Klopp’s main concern ahead of this Battle of Britain showdown appears to be at the other end of the pitch, where his own backline has been uncharacteristically leaky - losing eight goals in the last three games.
Klopp went on: “You are right. We have conceded similar goals where they go through the same gaps. The special problem that we have is that we have a very brave way of defending usually and when the timing in our defending is not perfect, we leave a gap open – that was always the case by the way.
“But because of the pressure we put on the ball no one really recognised it. We closed it with intensity. If you don’t do that, this gap is open for a short moment and Brighton used it quite often, they passed the ball through our gap in between the lines. That makes it tricky.
“So we have to make it more compact. We have to improve it and we know that. Defending is an art. It worked for us really well and when it is not working out anymore, you realise step by step how much you have to go back to the basics so you defend solidly again.
“We have to be patient, to do the right thing again and again until it works out. And then we’ll be fine. We can’t always start something completely new or think, ‘What else can we do?’.
“But if we can help the boys with a way to defend differently then we have to do that. We have to be more solid and compact.”
With Rangers next up, Klopp admits he is running out of time to implement those defensive adjustments. But the big red panic button has not been pressed just yet.
He went on: “That is actually my job - and it’s the same job I have as when you win 12 games in a row. That doesn’t happen very often but you have to stay on top of it, work on details. “That is what we do now - just with a different confidence level. “Usually at a time when you win a lot of games not everything is going your way in a game, but it doesn’t have the same impact.
“That’s what we have to get back to. We have to increase the amount of good moments and decrease the amount of not so good moments. That’s how you get out of every situation in life.”
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