Down by the river in SW6, they were lost souls like the Boat Race crews whose vessels sink.
But as Liverpool drifted into Aleksandar Mitrovic's firestorm of belligerence, a horrid truth stalked them along the towpath. Titles are not won on the first day of the season – but they can be lost if there's a glib assumption that Champions League aristocrats will always be too strong for the peasants.
Liverpool fell agonisingly short, by a single point, in their who-blinks-first duel with Manchester City last season – just as they did three years earlier. If they fall the wrong side of gossamer-fine margins again next May, Jurgen Klopp will live to regret the strolling dross his team served up for 45 minutes at Craven Cottage.
Fulham we can deal with in short measure. From start to finish, they were magnificent. Boss Marco Silva is the kind of bloke who probably looks in the bathroom mirror and likes what he sees, but he is a talented coach and Fulham unsettled Klopp's strolling pilgrims like a punk rock band disrupting choir practice.
Two-goal Mitrovic gave Virgil van Dijk a guided tour of the fired-up centre-forward's beat, and where Trent Alexander-Arnold only loitered timidly at the far post, the Serbian bull in a china shop smashed all the crockery to get on the end of Kenny Tete's cross to head the opener.
But Liverpool's performance was pedestrian, passive and complacent. Manager Klopp complained the pitch was “dry.” You what, mate? Don't you know there's a drought? Most observers saw a lush, bowling-green oasis in the middle of parched London, where it hasn't rained since about 1947. There was, at least, unanimous agreement with his damning assessment of a poor display until £85million substitute Darwin Nunez, with a delicious back-heeled finish, and Mohamed Salah supplied undeserved equalisers.
Nunez looked lively, and he cannot stay on the bench much longer, and Salah poached a record-equalling eighth goal on the first day of term. But Liverpool looked stale and one-paced in midfield, where Thiago Alcantara's hamstring injury could force Liverpool into the market before the window closes.
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Klopp said: “We played into their hands. We are used to more dominance and we never could get that because we just played not good enough, not quick enough, not precise enough, all these kind of things. You really want to know how frustrating the game was, on a scale of one to 10? Twelve. That was not us today. We played a really bad game.”
Skipper Jordan Henderson, who almost burgled a win in stoppage time with a fine effort against the bar, admitted: “We knew it would be tough before the game, [against] a newly promoted side, so there’s no excuses from us. I felt as though we looked a little bit lethargic at times, we didn’t play the way we normally do, and the only positive is we reacted in the right way.
“All the subs made a big impact when they came on, so that was a big plus. Darwin scored and we could have had one or two more. There’s a lot to work on - I know it’s only the first day of the season, but I think we wanted to start a lot better than that and we need to improve quickly.”
Mitrovic, who scored only three goals in Fulham's last stopover in the Premier League, said: “In the end, you have to be happy with one point against one of the best teams in the world, but the feeling is like we dropped two. Of course, it was nice to score two goals, but that's part of my job. To be honest, I don't listen very much to what people say - I know my quality.”
