Tottenham 4 Liverpool 1

Sometimes, the other team is just better.

Of course, there can be some tactical decisions Liverpool could have taken like perhaps playing it safe for the first 15 to 30 minutes to settle into the game before opening things up. Sometimes you can start the game too amped up. But that is 20-20 hindsight.

Lovren has certainly come under a lot of criticism but he is almost certainly playing hurt. It is pretty much personnel malpractice by Liverpool to keep running a guy out there who has to take pain killers to keep playing. The club knew going into the season that fixture congestion is part of Premier League and European scheduling and should have gotten at least one center back of similar caliber to Lovren and Matip regardless of whether they could land Southampton's Virgil Van Dijk.

In the end, though LFC is called part of the so-called big 6 (Man U, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool), it has less margin for error in the open market since they don't have the mega-budgets of the big 4 (Man U, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal). As such, they do have to do more "moneyball" thinking and the fans have to accept the diminished expectations that come with the inability to throw money at problems.

Liverpool did spend some big money this summer on Salah and he has become a fan favorite and is a key part of the offense. The somewhat high cost (considering his meager track record) of Oxlade-Chamberlain seems a bit high for what appears to be a role player rather than first choice starter. Solanke is a young and a work in progress but looks very promising. Robertson was a modest expense and remains to be seen what his eventual role will be on the club since Moreno is still getting the lion's share of the minutes at left back.

Klopp has often said, show me a center back in the open market that is better than what we got?

Fair enough.

But might there have been center backs that were just as good as what they have that they could have gotten in the summer to step in for the inevitable injuries that will happen in a long campaign?

Klopp's managerial brother a mile away at Everton (Ronald Koeman) has been sacked for a poor start. Some hyperventilating LFC fans are calling for Klopp's ouster. Hopefully, those fans can be talked off that ledge but I suspect not. LFC isn't in such a dire situation.

They will need to do something about the defense at the January window at the very least.