First it was Mohamed Salah, then Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones. Naby Keita and Fabinho followed on before Thiago Alcantara and Ibrahima Konate and the rest of the Liverpool team, one by one, joined them in trudging slowly down the Brighton tunnel.
To a man, they all looked vaguely downbeat and mildly unenthused, like they'd just seen the No.82 bus pull away from their stop after attempting an unsuccessful charge towards it.
For all the glum faces, however, they did not look like their defence of the FA Cup had just ended. Or like a bunch of players who had just suffered defeat through a stoppage-time winner. They certainly didn't appear like a Liverpool team who had just experienced their ninth loss of a wretched campaign. In fact, it just didn't appear like any of it hurt all that much.
