Anfield was promised full-throttle football.
The reality: lethargy and disconnection, a tangled-up system as messy as the results themselves. Draw after draw after draw and a sense that this thing, if it was ever going to work, will take time.
The most important trait for Liverpool supporters to possess this season is patience. Fortunately, Anfield has been through this process before.
Jurgen Klopp drew each of his opening three as Liverpool manager after taking charge in October 2015, winning three of his first nine Premier League games and, by the end of the season, collected just 48 points from his 26 matches.
There were plenty of positives, plenty of signs the bold tactical ideas had clarity, but there were significant doubts about whether Klopp’s football could transfer to England.
Andoni Iraola was hired for his stylistic similarity to Klopp, yet while they broadly share a love for gegenpressing and direct Germanic football played in the transition, there are notable differences.
Early Klopp, for example, could not have overseen a performance like Liverpool’s in the 0-0 draw against Fulham on Saturday.
Iraola has now gone 22 Premier League matches without defeat, drawing 13 of those. His teams are furious and heavy metal, but the basis remains control. It is not as chaotic as Klopp and this, more than anything else, is what we must hold onto as debate rages about Liverpool’s central midfield.
The line drawn between Iraola and Klopp is a simple one, leading to simple analysis. The carnage of Klopp’s gegenpressing needed that Fabinho signing to hold down the fort, guard against counter-attacks, and complete the jigsaw - ergo Iraola needed a similar number six signing this summer.
But Bournemouth never had an out-and-out six. Tyler Adams isn’t quite the profile of destroyer most people have in mind when they think about Liverpool’s apparent midfield flaws, and indeed the stats tell us the same thing.
Last season Liverpool’s main midfield pair Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai made more combined tackles (115) and more combined interceptions (78) than Bournemouth’s Alex Scott and Tyler Adams (113 tackles, 69 interceptions).
Iraola is a systems coach if ever there was one.
Once the machine works the individual pieces do not require the specialist skill sets they would in other teams, hence the lack of destroyers at Bournemouth and hence why Iraola so often – and easily - replaced a departed-star with another (most notably, from a Liverpool perspective, swapping Milos Kerkez for Adrien Truffert).
Iraola is a true coach of his players, building them into an immaculately-structured system. The component parts are almost interchangeable.
That’s why Liverpool ought to take heart from the undefeated start and ought to shine a light on the positives – a combative win against Atletico Madrid defined by a swaggering performance by Florian Wirtz; Alexander Isak’s return to form domestically – rather than get drawn into debates about particular positions on the pitch.
Even the Fulham game can be spun positively. Liverpool failed to open up a defence that had conceded seven goals in the first three matches (only creating a couple of chances when pinching the ball high, Iraola- and Klopp-style) but they also kept a clean sheet, showing early stoicism upon which the more elaborate aspects of Iraola’s in-possession play can be built.
Again the key concept here is patience, and not just temporal. Iraola will get things wrong.
Another major departure from Klopp is their respective experience, of course. Klopp won two Bundesliga titles at Borussia Dortmund and arrived at Anfield a star manager; a coup for a club that hadn’t won the title in 25 years.
Iraola had never managed a club with a stadium capacity above 12,000.
He is not used to the pressure or expectations that come with managing a super-club, and more importantly, he is not used to being expected to dominate the ball and win the majority of matches. This is a crucial difference to Klopp, who by the time he arrived at Liverpool had mastered the step up.
Iraola is not familiar with two games a week, which might make his ultra-pressing football too exhausting, as he has already acknowledged, blaming a lack of “energy” after the Atleti win for Saturday’s 0-0 draw. That’s a serious issue to iron out.
The solution, most likely, will be the same one Klopp reached, which is to introduce a more nuanced version of heavy-metal football that can cope with the challenges of a 60-game season – and, as importantly, can cope with the challenges of being gifted so much of the ball.
Last season Bournemouth held more than 50% possession in exactly half of their Premier League games. They won 23 points with a win ratio of 21% when they held the majority of the ball, compared with 34 points and a win ratio of 47% when they didn’t.
Iraola has no positive experiences of being the favourite, the leader, the team in charge of the ball. That is bound to affect his management on the pitch and in the dressing room but it does not automatically mean he needs to sign a burly midfield destroyer to plug gaps.
The tactical setup is more complicated than any simple solution, for better and for worse. All Anfield can do is wait.
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