That’s certainly the impression we’re getting, anyway, whenever Jurgen Klopp and his would-be title contenders are mentioned.
Four games, no wins, two goals and last year’s score-for-fun Egyptian superhero going from electrified to mummified.
For most managers, most clubs, most strikers, it would be crisis point. Forums flooded with experts spouting about one-season wonders or managers not being all that after all.
Only it seems in the ever critical, ever more knee-jerk world of football criticism and expert opinions, Klopp, Mo Salah and Liverpool aren’t most people.
Last season’s self-styled champions of April — but never the Prem, by the way — have picked up just two points from six, the last of which was thanks only to the worst penalty you’ll see this term.
They’ve lost in Europe without managing a shot on target and crashed out of the League Cup at home after going a goal up. Maybe, then, the team everyone with a Merseyside postcode seems to think are the nation’s darlings have been talked up a bit too much?
No, not a bit of it, if the silence from the usual shout-it-from-the-rooftop brigade are to be believed.
There hasn’t been a squeak. Other than the odd burst of “oh, well look at the run of fixtures they’ve had” excuse.
Well yes, Chelsea twice, Napoli and City is hardly a gimme in anyone’s book. No one should be daft enough to believe anything else.
Yet if Pep Guardiola’s City had come through a run like that with a return like this, would there have been a similar hush?
It’s not only results that leave you wondering. In the summer Klopp saw midfield as an area where Liverpool were particularly short, so spent nearly £100m on Naby Keita and Fabinho.
The first has struggled more and more by the week, the second hasn’t got off the bench in the four Prem games he’s made it that far.
And Mauricio Pochettino is another who must be scratching his head. A month ago he lost three on the bounce for the first time in his four-year reign and Spurs were a club in crisis.
Such a crisis that they are two points behind third-placed Liverpool, with a 3-0 win at Old Trafford to their name.
Ah, yes. Old Trafford and Jose Mourinho. The treatment he’s had compared to the Emperor of Anfield almost makes you feel sympathy for the Manchester United chief. Almost.
Likewise with Salah. No one expected him to follow last year’s haul with a similar one but at times so far he could have been wearing diving boots.
Not to worry, say the know-everythings. It’s only a matter of time. He’ll be rattling them in again soon.
Pretty much the same bunch who were writing off Harry Kane as a 32-goal one-season wonder when he took nine to get off the mark second time round.
Then he was a two- season wonder when he couldn’t score in August the next one.
Then again, Kane’s got a cockerel on his chest, not a liver bird, hasn’t he?
Yes, Salah’s form will get better than the shocking stuff he’s producing at the moment.
True, Klopp might end a three-decade drought and lead Liverpool to the first Premier League title in their history.
But until then, just put them under the same microscope as everyone else, eh?
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