Pain motivates. It's primary existence as a physical function is so that if you were to put your hand under a flame, there would be a message sent to your brain pretty fucking sharpish saying "don't do that." Liverpool Football Club knows pain. The problem lies within how it's registered.
First of all, there's the reaction. The idea that any problem we have right now is *the worst*. We're all guilty. Right now I don't see how you can't This Liverpool side might be the most infuriating in terms of the discrepancy between attack and defence, between what it does well and how it fails. But that in of itself is a problem. Because if every time you face something, it becomes the biggest obstacle anyone could ever face, then the tasks not only become ever daunting but your likelihood of overcoming them grow ever shorter. Firefighting all the time makes it easy to get used to the idea that things should be on fire. Whisper it quietly, but they shouldn't.
After that come the brakes. The supposed voice of reason. What happens when you're panicking every time something happens that's not the way you planned is that the idea that there could be something wrong in the first place gets lost in a wave of fickle ideas. No football manager or team is wrong all the time and so if you're accusing them of such then when it comes time to question their methods it's already been diluted.
What's worse, the natural predication of fandom is to stick up for those who are being seen to be unnecessarily challenged. That in turn develops a defence mechanism that does not prepare for valid points. We all draw our lines as fans, both for our own clubs and players and those beyond. However researched or knowledgeable it may be, rarely do they move. But they do move.
Once anyone has their mind made up these days, that's about as close to a cul de sac as one can get. Such and such is world class. Another - similar player - is living off his teammates ability. Managers are both frauds and geniuses. Could even be the same manager if you ask two different people. The fact is that most of the time these opinions are left unchallenged. It doesn't even matter if they're right or wrong. The only way to really find out is when things are going wrong.
Comfort and change are strange bedfellows. Why would a manager swap things around when everything is going well? He can try to find that secret combination which will suddenly make everything "click" again. Sometimes he can try too much. But he has to try. Liverpool are in a position to try things. For the eternal pessimistic, their season is as over as Chelsea's was around this stage last year. Perhaps for Dejan Lovren however, that might be a Stamford Bridge too far. Which is to say he should not play for LFC again.
The problem is not the defeat in isolation. It is in what it confirms about the summer. What it says about a squad that is not as strong as those who are making decisions thought it was. That's why hurting matters. The likelihood is that it won't get much worse than this. In terms of fixtures, there aren't many more [away] games to strike fear into our hearts. The hope is that we get on a run. The kind of roll that takes us as far away from our downtrodden minds. If we do we need to bear in mind one thing. The pain of right now. If we do not learn from it in the present, we will be doomed to repeat it.
