Reds alert: Warning signs at both ends
Liverpool's 7-6 aggregate win exposes their weaknesses: a haphazard backline and a marksman who can be nullied by double-teaming
Riding the rollercoaster has become second nature for the modern Liverpool.
Each moment of relative formality is invariably punctuated with an asterisk.
Reaching the Champions League final with a 7-6 aggregate win over Roma yesterday morning (Singapore time) - after losing the second leg 2-4 - merely confirmed their status as football's eternal thrill seekers.
Juergen Klopp's side never do things the easy way.
In that respect, they are little different than their recent predecessors who reached the showpiece of Europe's elite club competition.
Under Rafael Benitez, the Reds became standard-bearers for defying the status quo.
Across five years, they became the underdogs who slayed modern behemoths of the game such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and Chelsea.
Yet the current crop's place in Anfield's continental history is already unprecedented.
They have overcome the good, bad and relative indifferent from their past but a record-breaking aggregate score - the largest in the Champions League memory - further underlined how brilliantly flawed they will be in 22 days' time when they travel to Kiev.
At a third time of asking, Klopp could finally make good on promises to deliver silverware to the club's trophy cabinet within his original 2019 time frame.
History may be on Liverpool's side in a rerun of the 1981 European Cup final but their German coach's record in finals is highly ominous.
Just one win in six previous showpieces - coming in the 2012 German Cup final - coupled with his willingness to subscribe to a footballing chaos theory, also undermines plans to deny Real Madrid a third successive European crown.
None of their previous teams in this competition have been blessed with such an array of prolific marksmen while simultaneously hampered by a routinely haphazard backline.
Attack has consistently been their best form of defence, but it is the latter which threatens to become their great undoing against Los Blancos in the Ukraine later this month.
Countless warning signs emerged at both ends of the field at the Stadio Olimpico.
Virgil van Dijk and Dejan Lovren are yet to stack up to the reassuring presence provided by Sami Hyypia and Jamie Carragher to the team which defied the odds in the Istanbul final of 2005.
Trent Alexander-Arnold, similarly, found himself exposed by Roma as Liverpool's perceived weak link - seemingly on the grounds of relative inexperience - as Edin Dzeko and Stephan El Shaarawy provided Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema with the perfect pathfinder.
In attack, the Italian side were able to nullify Mohamed Salah on his maiden return to Rome.
Doubling up on the Egypt international limits the maximum impact that Liverpool's front men can wreak; another gift from the Romans to their counterparts in Madrid.
Removing Salah at regular intervals also coincided with his side carelessly conceding goals, which either cost them maximum points or offered opponents unlikely routes back into ties.
Now scoreless in two outings, Salah's hopes of eclipsing Ian Rush's season-best tally could be downgraded to an increasingly long shot, with a second homecoming this Sunday, against Chelsea .
History has often been a millstone around the necks of successive Liverpool sides.
Such remains the enormity of the Boot Room's legacy that only those can retrace their path, trophy for trophy, will ever find themselves immune from the scourge of inevitable comparisons.
Klopp's players could begin that unburdening in Kiev - but only if they can dissuade themselves from taking one last whirl on the white-knuckle ride.
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