Liverpool are attempting to turn around a run of nine defeats in 12 when they travel to West Ham United on Sunday afternoon
Jurgen Klopp celebrates on the pitch after the English Premier League football match between Southampton and Liverpool at St Mary's Stadium, April 2019
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At the height of Jurgen Klopp's time at Liverpool, his team had come to earn the nickname of the 'mentality monsters'. It was a moniker coined by the manager himself, who famously dubbed his players as such after a now iconic fightback to beat Barcelona 4-3 on aggregate to reach the 2019 Champions League final. Or so the legend goes.
Klopp had actually first used the phrase about a month earlier when they fought back from a goal down at Southampton to win 3-1 and keep on the tails of Manchester City, who would eventually beat them 98 points to 97 in a title race that more than made up for its lack of drama through nerveless excellence.
After going behind to Shane Long's ninth-minute goal, the away side responded through Naby Keita before a memorable breakaway goal saw Mohamed Salah score with 10 minutes remaining. It was a strike celebrated as riotously as anything else that league campaign before Jordan Henderson made the result safe six minutes later.
It kept Liverpool firmly on the heels of City with about six weeks remaining and led to Klopp christening his team with a nickname that came to define an era.
"It was just an amazing moment," Klopp said of Henderson's game-sealing third. "Really, the boys are mentality monsters - I love that.”
That game was the fifth of a run that saw Klopp's men win 14 of 15 from early March to the start of June, with the one defeat, at Barcelona, eventually being avenged with the mother of all comebacks at Anfield on May 7, 2019.
The mentality monsters endearment was more than just an off-the-cuff remark that stuck; it was how Klopp's team were able to fight through adversity to win the Champions League three weeks after seeing the highest points tally in the club's history only reward them with silver medals in the Premier League.
It was what then enabled them to go one better the following season as they tore through the Premier League as champions of Europe, winning 26 of their first 27 games and eventually collecting 99 points, having won their 19th title with a record seven games to spare.
If all this feels like simply harking back to happier times at a current juncture that sees Liverpool on their worst run since 1953, there is a wider point.
Liverpool, at their peak under Klopp, were famed for their levels of resilience and unwillingness to accept that adversity could not be overcome.
Even last season under Arne Slot, as the Reds sauntered their way to a 20th title at the first time of asking under the Dutch coach, Liverpool were made to come from behind 13 times to win five and draw eight across all competitions.
This term, the Reds are without a single draw in any competition and a run of nine defeats in the last 12 has seen them ship the first goal 10 times. The other two were clean sheets, against Aston Villa and Real Madrid.
The only time Liverpool have earned anything after conceding first was the 5-1 hammering of an Eintracht Frankfurt side who have been one of the most open teams in Europe's top five leagues this term, having shipped 22 in the Bundesliga and 14 in the Champions League.
If Slot's team have demonstrated they are incapable of mustering a response when conceding first, then more focus needs to be trained on the early goings of matches.
Across the last dozen games, the Premier League champions have registered concessions inside the opening 15 minutes five times, four of them inside the first 10. All of them have resulted in defeats. Starting well might go a long way towards arresting this slump.
All too often heads drop and confidence ebbs away when goals are conceded and when teams aren't having to work hard to score in the early exchanges, that is a recipe for catastrophe, the likes of which we are seeing presently.
Slot's team may not necessarily need to be Klopp's mentality monsters in their efforts to turn around a staggeringly poor run but a passable impression might be the key to getting this campaign back on the rails.