THAT’S the trouble with strong starts; when they come to an end, it tends to hurt just that little bit more.
Liverpool’s unbeaten opening to the Premier League season had prompted tentative talk of a title tilt at Anfield.
The momentum gleaned from successive wins against Arsenal and Bolton had been added to by some shrewd work in the final days of the transfer window.
Resurrection is the buzz word on the red half of Merseyside.
Stoke, however, love nothing more than spoiling a good party.
A first-half penalty, won and converted by the Birkenhead-born Jon Walters, ensured Tony Pulis’ side took all three points, and saw them leapfrog their opponents into the Premier League’s top four.
This was Liverpool’s second successive defeat at the Britannia Stadium – a ground on which they are yet to record a league victory in four attempts.
But where last season’s surrender – coming as it did in the darkest days of Roy Hodgson’s reign – was abject, hopeless and utterly deserved, this time Kenny Dalglish’s men will have headed back up the M6 wondering how on earth their dominance had gone unrewarded.
Liverpool deserved three points, never mind one.
A clutch of second-half chances – most of them missed by Jordan Henderson during one incredible passage of play – went begging.
And Liverpool saw two strong penalty shouts waved away by referee Mark Clattenburg, who had no hesitation in pointing to the spot when Walters tumbled under Jamie Carragher’s awkward challenge.
Dalglish’s post-match comments, unsurprisingly, centred around Clattenburg’s performance.
Yet while it is true that the three big decisions all went against Liverpool here, the Anfield chief’s suggestion that his respectful approach to match officials is doing his side no favours seems a little paranoid.
In any case, Liverpool should not have required any intervention from the man in the middle. They dominated possession from the word go, forced a dozen corners and had 20 attempts on goal.
Walters’ penalty was Stoke’s only shot on target all afternoon, and they spent the bulk of the second half camped on the edge of their own penalty area, defending for their lives.
To their credit, it worked. Ryan Shawcross and Matthew Upson were heroic, while Asmir Begovic made a string of stops.
But it was Liverpool’s wastefulness, particularly in the final third, which proved their undoing.
Dalglish made just one change from the side which had so comprehensively outplayed Bolton a fortnight ago, with Martin Skrtel starting at right-back amid concerns over the fitness of Glen Johnson and Martin Kelly.
