When Jürgen Klopp’s players departed for international duty at the end of August - on the back of a 4-0 win over Arsenal - the mood at Anfield could hardly have been better.
Since then it’s fair to say Liverpool have been in somewhat of a slump, from a 5-0 hammering by Manchester City to an instant departure from the League Cup.
Not a great run by any stretch of the imagination, but is it really time to be asking questions about Jürgen Klopp ?
Since the German arrived from his post-Dortmund holiday, to take over from Brendan Rodgers at a very disillusioned Anfield, he’s had the Reds in two cup finals and got them back into the Champions League.
The football has been far better to watch than it has been in years and the players he inherited have also, on the whole, been far better at their jobs than they were before.
Of course, sooner or later, Klopp will have to bring Liverpool the silverware he promised in that first press conference at Anfield just short of two years ago, but four games in three competitions is hardly season-defining, let alone career-defining.
And yes, it really is still less than two years since he was appointed.
One big change since Klopp’s arrival is that Liverpool do now look like a club with the desire to win the biggest prizes in football once more and there are few managers who could do more to deliver that success at Anfield.
Liverpool’s resources are vast by any normal measure, but not when measured against that of the other major clubs, at home or in Europe.
The 4-0 win over Arsenal came just as the transfer window entered its final week.
The Reds were standing firm with Barcelona over Philippe Coutinho, sending out a message that Liverpool are not a selling club. Not only that, the speculation about new signings suggested Liverpool were about to show they had spending power of their own, with a last-minute frenzy expected to add to what had already been done over the summer.
In the end the frenzy turned out to be just one player, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain , and it turned out he would need some time to acclimatise to Liverpool’s way of playing football.
This should have been the summer where Liverpool brought in the players to make last season’s squad better and stronger, able to fight on all fronts, but the deals could just not be done – at least not this summer.
The Reds did do some deals, the introduction of Mo Salah meaning Klopp has another player at his disposal with the kind of threat Sadio Mane introduced to the squad last season. At left back Andrew Robertson has looked an excellent buy.
These are also the kind of signings that allow Klopp to rotate his squad through the heavier schedule, without seriously reducing the overall quality out on the pitch.
Liverpool also secured the services of Naby Keita for a fee expected to be well over £50m - but in a deal that means he won’t actually arrive until next summer.
Should Liverpool have given up on the Keita deal and brought somebody in who could play this season but would be little more than a stop-gap, or is this long-term thinking the best way to use the resources the club does have?
It has to be assumed that some long term thinking was in play when Liverpool didn’t make a late move for Virgil van Dijk or any other centre back.
This is the position Liverpool have needed to strengthen more than any other yet Klopp seems content to continue with what he has. Fans were horrified when the window closed without anything done to improve in that position and it might yet prove to be a catastrophic decision.
None of this goes far enough to explain Liverpool’s run since the window closed. Four games, no wins, knocked out of the League Cup, only getting a draw in the Champions League. Two home games, two draws - one of them against Burnley.
But it’s only four games – and just two of them were in the league.
That Champions League game was against Sevilla and, afterwards, it was hard to think of it as anything other than two dropped points. Yet a glance at La Liga shows Sevilla are currently unbeaten and in one the spots in the table usually taken by either Barcelona or Real Madrid, second behind the Catalan side. Real Madrid meanwhile are down in eighth, having only won twice from their five league games so far.
Is anyone going to write Real Madrid off this early in the season? Yes, Zinedine Zidane’s position is probably already in doubt but that’s because of the bonkers world of Real Madrid, not because their season is already over.
Liverpool are two points closer to the top of the Premier League than Real are to La Liga’s summit.
This is absolutely not a time for any panic from Liverpool and Klopp has to continue with his plan, although he maybe needs to come up with new ways to get the details of what to do at set-pieces drummed into his players’ heads.
Liverpool have three more away games before the next international break, including a trip to Russia in the Champions League and the journey up to face ex-Reds boss Rafa Benitez’s Newcastle side.
Then it’s Manchester United at home, on October 14th, just after Klopp’s second anniversary as Liverpool boss.
As the games go on missing players move closer to fitness – or the end of their suspensions – and the new players bed in yet more. When everybody is fit and on form Liverpool will be frightening once more – even if the fright is occasionally for Reds fans when watching set pieces.
If Klopp began his Anfield reign with a checklist of Liverpool’s existing problems he has certainly ploughed through it - but it would have been a long checklist.
There is still a great deal of time remaining this season, enough for this slump to be completely forgotten about, but more importantly there should still be plenty of time left in Klopp’s Liverpool career for him to tick the rest of the problems off from that checklist.
This is no time to be asking questions about Jürgen Klopp’s future.