This was a long way from the controlled Liverpool of last season, with new signing Milos Kerkez in particular struggling against his old team
To take a side who have just won the league and make four major changes cannot be anything but a risk. There will always be at least some process of adaptation, particularly given the slight change of shape the arrival of Florian Wirtz has entailed.
The danger for Liverpool is that they give up points that could prove costly if this is a tight title race. While that transition goes on, results perhaps matter more than performances, so long as the trend of those performances is towards a greater cohesion.
Improvement certainly is needed. Liverpool cannot give up goals as easily as they did in the Community Shield and here if they are to defend their title. But they found a way to get the three points, the key goal coming from the most unlikely source of Federico Chiesa, and started the season with a win.
And for all the talk of personnel changes and tactics, the image of Mohamed Salah standing alone before the Kop after the final whistle, wiping the tears away with his cuff as fans sang the Diogo Jota song, was a poignant image of how difficult this season will inevitably be for Liverpool’s players.
