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"For me, not so far," Arne Slot said when he was asked about how far away from last season's level Liverpool currently is. After defeats to Crystal Palace and Galatasaray, such a question was inevitable.
Perhaps the answer was too. The Liverpool boss was never going to admit in public that his side is nowhere near the controlled and dominant outfit that it was in 2024/25, when it ran away with the Premier League title and won its first seven Champions League games.
But there is no doubt that the reality doesn't match up. In the first half at Selhurst Park, Liverpool was atrocious. In the second half in Istanbul, it was apathetic.
"We have lost now twice in a row but Galatasaray away is not an easy game," Slot reasoned. "It is the same as Crystal Palace, and now we play Chelsea away, so difficult games.
"Palace was a game last season that we won 1-0, but this time we conceded two set-pieces and lost 2-1. The margins are small. The margins were very small last season but then we were a lot of times on the right side of the score.
"For me, I saw a lot of things first half [in Turkey] — the way we played, the way we controlled the game, the amount of times we got our attackers in promising positions.
"Second half, it was much less. But second half, I don't think there was a lot of playing time... subsitutions, injuries... it was so hard to get momentum in the game."
Meanwhile, Virgil van Dijk said, "I'm not worried that things will click, but we have to keep going.
"Losing twice in a row doesn't feel good. I hate losing. There shouldn't be panic but there is definitely improvement needed."
The positive is that the tools are there. In Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Mohamed Salah, to name just four, there are more than enough players there to start scoring and find their way out of the current troubles.
But at the same time, Liverpool has been defensively porous in each of its last two matches. Simultaneously, it has struggled to create or control, which is a toxic mix.
There are mitigating circumstances. Liverpool changed a lot of things in the summer — lots of players, and its formation — but the "extra weapons" that Slot brought in are yet to ignite.
The idea that Liverpool is only around the corner from finding the consistency that it had last season ignores the warning signs that have been there for weeks.
Liverpool has conceded four times from set-pieces in its six Premier League games this season. It took 22 matches in the league last season to reach the same number.
A routine 2-0 was the most common scoreline that Liverpool saw last season. On the evidence of the new campaign to date, it is most likely to go two goals ahead before being pegged back.
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In all but one game this season, Liverpool has been able to muster a late goal in the 80th minute or later, but that didn't happen against Galatasaray.
Instead, the Reds added looking meek in the final third to never being more than one step away from a defensive error.
In public, Slot might not feel that he can admit the full extent of the issues that need resolving. Behind the scenes, though, it is surely a different story.
Now is not the time to worry or panic, but the positive being clung to after the five late winners in a row was that the performances were about to get better.
In reality, in the last few days, they have got substantially worse.
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