Perhaps a question mark should be added to the legend that greets teams clattering down the steps to take the field at Liverpool. This is Anfield? Certainly, the repercussions of Sunday's lame 2-0 home defeat by Arsenal appear to have left Brendan Rodgers's team in limbo while their manager seems to be at odds with the club's American owners.
Rodgers stressed that Fenway Sports Group "have been very up front and honest with me" but he did concede: "There are obviously one or two things we need to iron out." Rodgers's main beef is that having let Andy Carroll join West Ham on loan he was unable to sign another striker, Fulham's Clint Dempsey, because Fenway would not offer more than £4m for the 29-year-old American.
This has left Rodgers with only two recognised strikers, Luis Suárez and Fabio Borini, below, their £10m summer signing from Roma. Suárez is a gifted creative influence but has yet to reproduce the regular scoring form which brought him 81 goals in 110 Dutch league appearances for Ajax. Playing up front on his own against Arsenal his expression looked even more pained than usual.
When Liverpool are making more news off the field than on it then clearly something is going wrong and John W Henry as good as admitted as much in this week's open letter to the fans. "We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes," he declared. "It will not happen overnight. It has been compounded by our own mistakes in a difficult first two years of ownership."
Henry continued: "It has been a harsh education, but make no mistake, the club is healthier today than it was when we took over."
Financially that may be true but supporters judge a club's health by what is happening on the pitch and at the moment, in Liverpool's case, that is not very much. Having made their worst start after three games since 1962, when they returned to the old First Division under Bill Shankly, Liverpool are in danger of becoming long-term also-rans, a prospect made even less palatable for their fans by the way Everton, perennially slow starters, have burst out of the blocks this time.
Rodgers's skill in producing outstanding performances from his team at Swansea on modest resources may turn out to be more valuable at Liverpool than he may have anticipated. Certainly Henry does not envisage Liverpool rejoining the big spenders. "Spending is not merely about buying talent," he told the supporters. "Our ambitions do not lie in cementing a mid-table place with expensive, short-term quick fixes that will only contribute for a couple of years. Our emphasis will be on developing our own players …"
That was the way Liverpool ran things during the era of Shankly and Bob Paisley. While they were always prepared to spend big to get the right man, and no man was better suited to that Liverpool setup than Kenny Dalglish, the foundations of the squad were nurtured from youth. Then again, Liverpool's greatest teams belonged to the time before the Bosman ruling under which the freedom of contract won by the players became a licence to ply their trade worldwide.
Whether Henry likes it or not, this is the age of the short-term fix. Long-term planning is at the mercy of players, their agents and which clubs have the deepest pockets. Ask Arsène Wenger, who has seen the heart of an outstanding side leave for richer pastures because Arsenal will not wreck their finances to give players bigger contracts. But at least Arsenal have retained much of the quality in the football Wenger's teams have produced, season after season, during his 16 years as manager. That much was evident in the way Liverpool were outpassed, outmanoeuvred and outthought at Anfield last weekend.
Some of the names that have been mentioned as possible answers to Rodgers's shortage of strikers, now that the transfer window has closed, say a lot about the present poverty of Liverpool's outlook. Presumably re-signing Emile Heskey is not part of Henry's plans.
Anfield, of course, is still picking up the pieces from Dalglish's second stint there as manager which last season saw the team suffer such a slump in home form – six league matches won, nine drawn and four lost – that their record at Anfield was comparable to 1953-54 (7-8-6) when Liverpool were relegated.
No chance of that this time.
Is there?