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Arne Slot is not afraid to raise his voice, and turned the air blue several times last season even as Liverpool bulldozed their way to the Premier League title.
But even after a fourth straight defeat, the mood was calm in the Reds' dressing room while the Sky Sports cameras were capturing the celebrations in Manchester United's room following a 2-1 defeat for Slot's men.
That is not to say they all sat in silence, but Slot cut a more relaxed figure in the immediate aftermath of the most striking result of this month of disappointments. For the first time in his managerial career, the head coach knows he is under pressure.
Not pressure in the sense that his job is under threat – that is silly, Slot has enough credit in the bank to last a while yet before that is a serious conversation – but pressure in that the fans are frustrated and the grumbles are growing louder.
‘You cannot hide, you have to keep going,’ was the gist of what captain Virgil van Dijk told the squad at full time, urging them to end this sobering October and move on, also telling the room to forget about it and focus only on the next game.
Several things are in hiding though, regardless of Van Dijk’s warning.
Arne Slot cut a more relaxed figure in the immediate aftermath of the most striking result of this month of disappointments
‘You cannot hide, you have to keep going,’ was the gist of what captain Virgil van Dijk told the squad at full time
Harry Maguire's late header condemned Liverpool to a fourth successive defeat
Where is the killer instinct that saw this team win 23, draw three and lose one of their games from the start of last term up until New Year's Day? Where hides Mohamed Salah, who registered 1.09 goals or assists per game last year, but this season has seen that cut in half?
Where is the defensive cohesion that meant, at the same stage of last season (12 games in all competitions) they had conceded just five goals and now it is a whopping 17, a figure they did not hit until mid-December last year?
Where is the unity and understanding between the terraces and the pitch? Liverpool left it late to win games several times last season and Anfield felt like a hostile place for opponents to visit, and left you battling tinnitus for some time afterwards. Now it is a hive of anxiety and the stands are noticeably quieter for 90 per cent of games.
Maybe this is what comes with expectation. This time last year, a team supposedly in transition turned out to be a team with all the hallmarks of champions in waiting. Before Slot’s first game, most people – maybe even the Dutchman – thought it would take time for this side to gel.
Four points off the top of the table after eight games, having won five of those, was probably about par for the course for a team with little outside noise. So maybe Liverpool are just experiencing delayed-onset symptoms of the expected post-Jurgen Klopp dip.
Funnily enough, Klopp was all over our screens and news feeds on Monday morning after his two-and-a-half-hour sitdown with Dragons Den tycoon Steven Bartlett.
The German failed to rule out ever returning to the Anfield dugout in an enlightening episode of Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast. That will not happen, of course, but it set tongues wagging among Liverpool fans, some of whom who are asking questions of Slot for the first time.
Most of those takes have been a mass overreaction - it's only 145 days since he was parading the Premier League trophy through the streets of Liverpool - but he is not exempt from blame for Liverpool’s last four matches. The chief problems are team selection, in-game management and post-match comments that play down rather than wonder about the nature of four bad performances.
Liverpool's horror run began when they went down to a 97th-minute winner at Crystal Palace...
...continued in Istanbul with a 1-0 defeat by Galatasaray in the Champions League...
...and became a hat-trick of defeats at Stamford Bridge at the start of October
Against Eintracht Frankfurt this week, surely Hugo Ekitike must start to face his former club as £125million man Alexander Isak still looks way off the pace. Curtis Jones and Federico Chiesa often impress off the bench and deserve more game time, while Andy Robertson and Joe Gomez could also be called upon.
Some fans have even voiced annoyances over the fact Slot spent the two-week international break sunning himself in Dubai. Speaking to those close to the manager in the last week, it is clear that he spent most of that trip plotting how to fix this run of form and was studying clips on his laptop, not just adding snaps to his photo albums.
Slot, much like he did in the Anfield dressing room on Sunday night, is remaining calm. He reads Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in the mornings and listens to talkSPORT on his morning drive into work, but largely is not impacted by negative noise in the media.
Despite this, he chose to live outside the city of Liverpool for the sole reason of having a quieter life, away from the hustle-and-bustle and churn of opinion.
He did the same at Feyenoord after being called a ‘snake’ when he left AZ Alkmaar to join the Rotterdam club, it is said.
The point is that Slot will not be fazed by any negativity thrown his way this week. The boss, we understand, has told his teams about the strategies cyclist Lance Armstrong used to demoralise his rivals when he was in bad form: smile at the camera, then power ahead up the Alps.
Slot threw several smiles in the direction of reporters after the loss to United on Sunday, keeping with that mantra of his, remaining cool and collected when quizzed on his team’s blip, which is turning into a mini-crisis.
Liverpool have slipped four points back of leaders Arsenal, and have a very tricky run coming up in the next month
Anfield has been a hive of anxiety and the stands are noticeably quieter for 90 per cent of games
Slot has also conceded privately that the Dutch media are much harder – in terms of the questions they ask – than those over here. Another couple of defeats and that may change, we all know what us in the English media are like when they smell a hint of weakness.
Everyone at Liverpool hopes and believes it will not come to that. Three wins from three in the next block of league games before the November international break would put any talk of a crisis behind them, though they are all tricky fixtures.
After Wednesday’s trip to Frankfurt, the Reds go to Brentford late on Saturday night – an away game described by Pep Guardiola as ‘like going to the dentist’ – before hosting in-form Aston Villa and then a trip to title rivals Manchester City. There's also the small matter of a visit from Real Madrid in between Villa and City.
Van Dijk has told the squad that mental recovery is as important as physical rest before boarding the flight to Germany on Tuesday lunchtime.
While the international window is often labelled a ‘break’, it is anything but for players who travel around the world and often play twice.
In analysis sessions, Slot is known for sometimes cutting out negative clips to not dent players’ confidence but in post-United debriefs, he was at pains to stress how close Liverpool came to a draw.
Mohamed Salah, who is off-colour to say the least and, for the first time in years, looks shot of confidence, skewed a shot wide from point-blank range. Goalscorer Cody Gakpo could have had a hat-trick if Senne Lammens’ left post was an inch thinner.
Fine Margins, therefore, would be an appropriate title for a book on this season for Liverpool, with seven of eight Premier League games being decided either way by a goal in the dying stages, and the other being a narrow 2-1 win.
To be exact, in the eight games, the winning goal has been scored in minutes 88, 100, 83, 95, 29, 97, 95 and 84, while wins over Southampton in the League Cup and Atletico Madrid in the Champions League were sealed in the 85th and 92nd minute respectively.
Goalscorer Cody Gakpo could have had a hat-trick if Senne Lammens’ left post was an inch thinner
Chaos is good entertainment for the neutral but Slot wants control. Right now, his team is playing without that and it all feels a bit rushed
What does this tell us? Aside from the fact you are a fool if you leave before full time to beat the traffic or catch an earlier train home, Liverpool are riding on a wave of chaos. To quote Italy boss Gennaro Gattuso, ‘sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe s***’.
Chaos is good entertainment for the neutral but Slot wants control. Right now, his team is playing without that and it all feels a bit rushed.
To stick with the manager’s Armstrong analogy, rivals may have barged past and sprinted ahead but the long, arduous climb is ahead in the coming months. Time to re-oil the Slot Machine, fix the gaping punctures and start powering on again.
