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“We didn't pass, we didn't create and there were other bad moments as well,” Phil Thompson, the acting manager, said comprehensively. The truth may actually be more subtly depressing. Liverpool are still recognisably themselves and a fractional loss of form has been enough to turn a methodical team into a stereotyped one. They are the most inflexible of the challengers for the title and when their approach does not work there is no radical alternative.
With the disappointment, attention turns to the missing persons: Michael Owen, who was ruled out by an ankle injury on Wednesday, Gérard Houllier, who will not be able to return to the manager's post for at least another three or four weeks after his heart surgery, and Robbie Fowler, who has gone for good now that he has been sold to Leeds United. All three continue to be leading figures in the drama.
The truth is only tweaked slightly in the claim that Liverpool cannot score when Owen is absent. He has ten goals in the Premiership this season while no one else has scored more than three. Against Southampton there was a glint of Nicolas Anelka's former self in the performance of the attacker who has come from Paris Saint-Germain on loan, but he is still a surrogate for Owen. Where else can Liverpool find a player to change the nature of a game when the opposition sit deep and effectively limit the space for an Owen or an Anelka to use their pace? To mournful supporters, Fowler embodies an imaginative quality that has been sacrificed.
Houllier instilled a work ethic that had been lacking at Anfield, but the new Liverpool can be laboured. On the bad days, one notices a lack of flair on the wings, with Vladimir Smicer, Patrik Berger, Danny Murphy and Steven Gerrard having a natural list towards the middle of the field when deployed on the flanks.
Liverpool can be well-marshalled but limited. Those who call them dull are unfair and the repeated beatings of Manchester United were no cause for ennui, but the long season is exposing a lack of variety. The departure of Fowler will continue to provoke unrest, even if his potential was far in excess of his achievement at Liverpool this season. He had three Premiership goals to his name before he left, but a hat-trick at Filbert Street was proof, primarily, of Leicester City's befuddlement.
Although Fowler showed the worth of his mercurial interventions by finding the net in last season's Uefa Cup final victory over Alavés, there had been few of them subsequently. Perhaps the transfer was essential to revitalise him because he already has a greater quantity of goals for Leeds than he had mustered for Liverpool this season.
If Emile Heskey, who has not scored since November 25, had been contributing regularly, there would have been less controversy. As it is, Houllier's judgment will be tolerated by supporters even if it is not wholly trusted. The Frenchman himself knew that more change, some of it painful, was needed. When three cups were being seized last year, he still paused intermittently to state Manchester United's superiority. The burden of that truth has weighed on Thompson while Houllier has been convalescing, but the decline cannot be his fault alone. “We've been doing exactly the same things we did with Gérard,” he protested.
It would be hypocrisy to decry the caretaker's work. Who complained when he took Liverpool into the second group phase of the Champions League? Where were the objections, on December 8, when they beat Middlesbrough to lead the Premiership by six points and Manchester United by 11? Since then, Liverpool have come up against their limits. With the counter-attacking less productive, the defence has felt the strain and failed to keep a clean sheet in the past six Premiership games.
The return of Houllier will not offer an instant solution, but at least he will be in place to take charge of the next phase in the club's development. “It's the biggest game on the calendar when Liverpool come to town,” Thompson said after the loss to Southampton. He was wrong, but the side will know its renaissance is complete when that is truly the case.