Middlesbrough - 1 Liverpool - 0 If this is the attitude Liverpool are going to adopt on their travels, then wake me up when it is all over. Grey of apparel and greyer in ambition, Liverpool's first league defeat of the season was thoroughly fitting after a performance that gradually deteriorated from understandable caution into abject negativity.
Admittedly many of Liverpool's record 18 league championships were won in this manner: supremely organised defence, followed more often than not by a stolen late winner. And a side with seven straight Premiership wins behind them are doing an awful lot right.
But it can take 90 minutes to get out of the car park at the Riverside, so for the 90 minutes of the match to be a log jam of comparable frustration is taking it all a bit too far. You do not have to know your Biscans from your Babbels to curse Liverpool's lack of adventure.
A Liverpool title is overdue and a victory at Basle tomorrow, to reach the next stage of the Champions League, would also be well received in a season when Manchester United are strangely vulnerable.
Perhaps Middlesbrough's victory, gained by Gareth Southgate's late goal, will become that much prized asset, a "timely warning". To defeat the Swiss Liverpool must not only suppress the game but then possess the spark and the devil to win it.
Only Manchester United have had more shots at goal than Liverpool this season but it was a bit much on Saturday to imagine that Michael Owen should be entitled to all of them. Owen is forever only a second away from sneak-thievery, much in the manner of the lead urchin in Fagin's gang.
But police constables Southgate and Ugo Ehiogu kept the crime figures to zero. Then Jerzy Dudek made a hash of it.
When Szilard Nemeth floated over a right-wing cross, Liverpool's goalkeeper gave a passable impression of a faller at Becher's, leaving Southgate to stab the ball home. So Middlesbrough, far more resilient in midfield these days, go sixth. There were claims that Dudek was impeded by Alen Boksic but Gerard Houllier was honest enough to dismiss them. "There was no foul," the manager said. "The referee was right."
Massimo Maccarone had a goal disallowed for offside and Dudek saved uncertainly from Nemeth. Greening possessed dash and Joseph Desire Job, having finally discovered his middle name, threatened intermittently.
Liverpool had gathered strength as the first half progressed. In their most reckless moments Danny Murphy and Owen even got within shouting distance. But Emile Heskey plodded dolefully up and down in what amounted to the position of reserve wing-back. That cannot be right.
MIDDLESBROUGH: Schwarzer, Parnaby, Ehiogu, Southgate, Vidmar, Geremi, Boateng, Job, Greening, Maccarone (Boksic 70), Nemeth (Wilkshire 86). Subs Not Used: Crossley, Cooper, Whelan. Booked: Boksic. Goals: Southgate 82.
LIVERPOOL: Dudek, Carragher, Traore, Hyypia, Riise, Diao, Gerrard (Smicer 68), Hamann, Murphy (Baros 86), Heskey, Owen. Subs Not Used: Babbel, Kirkland, Biscan.
Referee: M Halsey (Lancashire).
