As the Liverpool players trudged off the Anfield pitch on Wednesday night, utterly shocked after the worst defeat of this crisis yet, they could barely bring themselves to look at other results. It was like none of it mattered. It might not, depending on whether this form continues in the Champions League.
Rival teams weren't quite the same, though, and many raised their eyebrows when they did their usual surveying of the games elsewhere. In one major dressing room, there was a response that immediately brought nods.
"That does not look like a team playing for the manager."
That, it should be stressed, isn't quite the same as the manager losing the dressing room. There genuinely are differences. But the errors are now so wild. The performances are so bad, with familiar patterns.
Arne Slot isn't getting a response out of these Liverpool players.
And it begs the obvious question over what the club's own response is going to be.
The stance has still been to try and rise above it all, to take the medium-term view. To persist. That has been the far-sighted strategy that has ultimately made Liverpool one of the world's most overperforming clubs over the 15 years of this ownership, after all.
The brutal reality of football, however, is that results can undo the best possible plans.
And, as one figure with knowledge of the Liverpool hierarchy said, "if the players still aren't responding, there is no other choice".
All of which just raises the stakes on Slot's own choices, which are now facing more and more scrutiny. From that, some theories have also grown in the game.
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