It's indicative of a torrid Liverpool season that a week without a game has still left the club so embattled.
The Reds head to Leeds United on Monday night having not played since that pulsating 2-2 draw with league leaders Arsenal eight days ago, yet still, Jurgen Klopp found his mood darkened during a tetchy press conference at the club's AXA Training Centre on Friday morning.
Klopp often bristles during media dealings when questions about the game he is theoretically there to preview don't come but Friday's gathering was always going to centre around talk of Jude Bellingham and the news that Liverpool will now be turning their attention elsewhere this summer.
Having tracked and openly flirted with the Borussia Dortmund midfielder for the best part of two years, so much so that even uber-professional captain Jordan Henderson admitted it "would be amazing" if Bellingham signed last month, Liverpool have now decided that a pursuit of one player that would cost in the region of £115-130m is not the best strategy at a time when a major rebuild of the midfield is needed.
It's a decision that has been hotly debated and criticism has come for it, with Jamie Carragher admitting it was a call that 'infuriated' him in his Telegraph column on Friday.
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"The discontent that I and many Liverpool supporters felt when the Bellingham revelation emerged on Tuesday evening is about the realisation the entire season has been a write-off based on a false pretence – that the money was there to go big on a stellar player as it was with Van Dijk, while still adding further necessary reinforcements to go again," Carragher wrote.
"How can the club suddenly baulk at a valuation exceeding £100million? They know that is the going rate for the best in class. What really infuriates me is the red herring that Liverpool have reached the conclusion Bellingham is too expensive on the basis of Klopp’s rebuild being bigger than initially thought. The club knows the elephant in the room is failing to sign a ready-made central midfielder last summer.
"What looked like a terrible mistake has become a monumental cock-up which has cost the club millions in the Champions League revenues they will lose by finishing outside of the top four, and has sent the team back to where it was just before Klopp’s appointment."
Klopp said: "It doesn’t help if I ask for something and I don’t get it and I say ‘I don’t want it anymore with him or with him’. That’s rubbish, that’s not okay. I’m too much of a professional. You are in this business, you make sure that’s what we can do, fine, work with it. Done. That’s it, make the best of it. Go about and go on the training ground."
"In this moment it looks like if we sign this player, everything will be fine, if we sign this player then ‘oh my God, do we really want to play football again?’.
"Based on other seasons I understand that but imagine now if I would fall into that trap as well and say ‘these guys I don’t want to see them anymore and let's make 12 changes and yes we have to build a new team’. It’s not like that. You are interested in a player, you think about a player, you have to check if it is possible or not, it’s not possible."
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The debate around Liverpool's decision to look elsewhere for a number of cheaper alternatives to England international Bellingham will rage for some time and it will surely bubble to the surface again whenever the Reds get the ball rolling on their midfield recruitment drive but for now Klopp and his team will want to park the issue.
Hopes of a top-four finish are surely now extinguished after a run of form that has left them 12 points behind the final Champions League spot but it is important that Klopp's side finish this campaign strongly. The merits of playing in the Europa League next season, like the transfer talk, will be discussed at length but Liverpool need their first real consistent run this term just to prove they are still capable of doing it as much as anything else.
It is likely to come too late in the day for a Champions League place but Monday's visit to Elland Road presents Klopp with the opportunity to begin to change the narrative with regards to their shocking away form. The Reds have taken just 13 points from 15 fixtures on the road this season and when the eventual carve-up of this poor term comes, those statistics could well be where Liverpool look first.
Klopp's men took 43 from a possible 57 away from Anfield last season and the most they can gather from their remaining four can only take them 25 this time out. They have too often crumbled without the safety blanket of Anfield.
A Monday evening trip to a red-hot Elland Road appears a daunting one then based on what has preceded it but Leeds shipped five to Crystal Palace in their most recent home fixture last week. How Liverpool emerge from a stirring draw with Arsenal that showcased a lot of battling qualities will be key to getting a result and adding to a paltry record that sees them in possession of just three wins away from home all season.
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