LFC RATINGS: Darwin Nunez really bad but two others shocking against Everton

LIVE UPDATES: All the reaction as Everton beat Liverpool 2-0 at Goodison Park

In the cold light of day, a more sober assessment of the campaign will reflect on progress, improvements and adjustments that have almost certainly brought about the return of Champions League football for next season, which will be contested by a new manager in the hotseat for the first time since October 2015.

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But before those measured takes and sage opinions can begin to make sense of all this, Reds supporters will vent, they will fume and they will, with justification, argue just why their team were once more attempting to pull it out of the fire as the match entered the final throes.

Klopp is undoubtedly one of the greats from both a club history perspective and of the current operators across European football but his inability to fix a glaring, season-long problem of starting slowly has undermined their pursuit of glory.

An Everton team who have won just three of the last 17 are able to count Klopp's title-chasers among them and at the exact wrong time of the season, the Reds have run out of ideas, energy and, for their manager at least, time.

For what is by now the umpteenth time this season, the Reds were slow out of the blocks and didn't start the game with the urgency that their general situation, the magnitude of the fixture or the atmosphere demanded.

Luis Diaz, the one performer to emerge with credit, rattled the inside of the post in the second period but they never truly looked like getting back into the game after Calvert-Lewin had steered home a second from a corner before the hour mark.

Liverpool might privately lament that their negotiations with Feyenoord over manager Arne Slot became public knowledge just hours before such a vital game but there can be no excuse making here.
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