Forget the thousand words of cliche, the pictures at Selhurst Park on Sunday told several thousand.
Brendan Rodgers, the reigning Manager of the Year, whose Liverpool side wrote the club’s goalscoring records, stood drenched in the London rain.
Beaten, bedraggled, beleaguered, he looked very alone.
His side were being condemned to a fourth successive defeat.
Whether Liverpool have faced the European champions, Real Madrid, league-leading Chelsea or a Palace side that had only taken one point from its five previous games, the outcome was the same. Liverpool lost.
They are already on their worst run since 2009, the season that brought an anti-climactic end to Rafa Benitez’s era at Anfield.
They have not suffered five straight defeats since 1953, when they were eventually relegated from the top flight.
If they are not yet in crisis, they are teetering on the brink.
There is little to suggest this side can retain its balance when they have lost virtually everything – and in the case of the sold Luis Suarez and the sidelined Daniel Sturridge, everyone who took them to the brink of greatness last season.
They face Ludogorets tonight. It could be billed as a classic clash of minnows and favourites as a 13-year-old club, only playing top-flight football for the fourth campaign, meets the five-time European champions.
The worrying element for Liverpool is that when they met in September, there was little to separate them in a 2-1 victory for Rodgers’ men.
Only an injury-time penalty, needlessly conceded by a debutant goalkeeper and nervelessly converted by Steven Gerrard.
Then it was possible to give Liverpool the benefit of the doubt. Their new signings needed time to gel.
Now it is harder to put a positive spin on events. Their form has deteriorated.
They have lost their intensity, along with their incision in attack. The only constant from last season is that they remain reliably bad at the back.
No wonder even Rodgers, showing rare humility, conceded he is not safe from losing his job, even if it would be desperately harsh to dismiss him.
The more immediate concern should be that Liverpool could fail to advance from the most inviting of the Uefa Champions League groups.
Any side drawn with Ludogorets, the least likely of all the 32 teams in Europe’s premier club competition, and Basel, admirable overachievers, but a low-budget club from a lesser league, ought to progress.
Having spent years dreaming of a return to the Champions League. Liverpool are confronted by the prospect of double disappointment.
They could exit the competition before the end of the year and, languishing in the wrong half of the Premier League, look unlikely to book their place in it next season. It would amount to failure on both fronts, with the potential to prove particularly embarrassing.
Fielding a B team against Real, despite respectable play from the understudies, was depressing itself for a club of Liverpool’s stature and history.
Without a considerable improvement in performance, there is the potential for the meeting with Ludogorets to be still more ignominious.
More than ever, Rodgers requires a result.
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