But when you're a team who's only strength is attacking, when you give away the easiest of goals (that most teams would put down to a singular 'bad day at the office') on a regular basis, at worse than once every other game, then you have nothing to come back with.
When it's your best attacker, your trump card, that's lost, then it's simply a case of how many you'll get outscored by.
We can't close a game out at two up. Three goals aren't necessarily enough for three points.
We can't defend at the best of times. Our modus operandus is to outscore the opposition, so when you lose your ace then the climb becomes vertical. If we could have held on for 1-0, it could have been seen as almost a victory of sorts, but they all saw the writing on the wall in huge neon flashing letters as soon as Mane was dismissed, threw up their hands and gave up on the spot.
I know Klopp wanted Van Dijk as first choice, and I think the degree of the desire led us to overplay our hand and get carried away in his pursuit.
I know clubs say "he's not for sale" and then later go back on their word, but surely there was a case for believing Southampton may be as determined to keep their best player as we were to keep ours, and therefore having recognised that as a possibility, which it always was until we see Van Dijk posing with a Liverpool scarf above his head on the Anfield turf, then we had to have an alternative.
The alternative didn't need to be someone like Van Dijk, or as good as Van Dijk etc, etc, in fact the alternative had nothing to do with Van Dijk. Our whole aim in getting Van Dijk was to improve the defence, not just to sign Van Dijk as an act in itself. Therefore, an alternative, not necessarily even the alternative, was to sign a player better than Klavan, or even better, Lovren.
Surely, there are/were central defenders better than Klavan available, and I'm sure better than Lovren too.
So whilst we didn't improve our defence with Van Dijk, we improved our defence none the less.
Blindness is a terrible thing, especially when it's not biologically caused.