Jurgen Klopp has managed to transform recrimination into expectation, which is the one important accomplishment he can take pride in after a disappointing Liverpool season.
Newcastle and Manchester United will inevitably get their final point, which would confirm Liverpool's participation in the Europa League, but the blame game for Liverpool's situation was planned and carried out in March.
The need to relive and ruminate on the errors that made the top four such a remote possibility had dissipated as the players accepted the cheers from the Kop following their final home game, featuring club veterans James Milner and Roberto Firmino serenading in a red shirt for the last time.
Liverpool entered this season looking to wring every drop of success from its winning recipe. Klopp successfully road-tests new experiments as they come to a close.
Trent Alexander-Arnold's transformation paid off right away, Curtis Jones broke through as a reliable first-team player, and Liverpool have unearthed Firmino's obvious successor in Cody Gakpo.
May is an odd month for a club to appear and sound re-energized, but the season, which could not have ended fast enough when Liverpool trailed the top four by 12 points with nine games remaining, has suddenly come to a conclusion one month too soon. When the smallest of improvements would have maintained top-four status earlier in the season, Klopp is left to regret all those miserable away days and lost points.
He and his allies have long since come to the conclusion that this time, everything went wrong. The following step in fixing it will be in the
With Alexander-Arnold playing in midfield, it is not difficult to see how midfielders with the profiles of Alexis Mac Allister and Mason Mount will easily fit into Klopp's modified formation, with Liverpool becoming even more of a technical, possession-based team while still depending on their strikers and advanced midfielders to press and counter-press like the proverbial Duracell bunnies.
It also comes as no surprise that Klopp is looking for a new defender, given Ibrahima Konate's frequent injuries and the fact that Alexander-Arnold's drifting puts more pressure on those behind him to cover the holes.
Aston Villa's organization and tactical acumen indicated potential trouble spots for Klopp, with their first penalty coming as a result of Ollie Watkins filling Alexander-Arnold's left-side empty space.
On Saturday, too
The deflation of European "relegation" is offset for those senior players who have accepted a season without Champions League action by a newfound optimism that, unlike last August, Liverpool will be prepared to take off in three months.
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