A bad afternoon that needed saying out loud

Three draws from four Premier League matches, a goalless home stalemate against a Fulham side yet to win this season, and a performance so short on energy that even Alisson Becker felt compelled to hold his hands up. Saturday at Anfield was not a good day, and to his credit, the Liverpool goalkeeper didn't dress it up.

"It was a poor performance, in some moments even from myself, but from the team," Alisson said after the final whistle. "Collectively, we didn't play well. Many things we tried to do, we couldn't do it well. We couldn't press them well." When your goalkeeper is leading the post-match inquest in those terms, you know the dressing room knows exactly how bad it looked.

The context matters, of course. Liverpool had come from behind to beat Atletico Madrid 2-1 at Anfield just 72 hours earlier in their opening Champions League fixture, and Andoni Iraola made three changes to the starting line-up for the Fulham match. The legs were heavy, the minds perhaps heavier. But Alisson is not willing to let that become a standing excuse.

The mindset problem Alisson put on the table

What made the goalkeeper's words so pointed was that he didn't frame this as a physical problem. He framed it as a mental one. "Obviously, it's a big challenge to play Wednesday night and Saturday evening, and you have another game Tuesday," he acknowledged. "But we need to get the right mentality to do that and I think it wasn't the case on Saturday. Deep inside we have it, we just need to put it out."

That is a significant thing to say publicly. Alisson is essentially telling his teammates that the quality is there, the squad depth is there, the excitement around the new signings is there, but the switch hasn't been flicked. Not consistently. Not when it really costs. He was careful to balance that with belief, pointing to the number of top players in the squad and calling for more energy on the pitch rather than questioning whether it exists at all. But the message was unmistakable.

He also touched on the wider challenge of adapting to Iraola's methods after a change of manager. "It's not easy," he said. "But he is doing really well, he is helping us in so many ways. His staff as well are helping everyone; we have a good environment, a good atmosphere in the training ground." Positive noises, but Alisson was equally clear that goodwill and atmosphere can only carry you so far. "We need to do that as quick as we can because we don't have time to waste."

What being unbeaten actually means with this shirt

The line that will stick is the one Alisson delivered at the end. Liverpool sit unbeaten after four Premier League matches, and he wants no part of celebrating that. "We are not happy at all with a draw. Unbeaten with three draws is not something to celebrate too much with this shirt, we celebrate being unbeaten if we win the games."

That is the standard being set, and it needs to be. The fixture list is not getting kinder. Tottenham Hotspur arrive at Anfield on Tuesday in the Carabao Cup, with Iraola potentially considering a rotated side, before the schedule rolls relentlessly on again at the weekend. Alisson was blunt about what the rest of the campaign demands: "If we want to do something special this season we have to cope with that, to play a big game on Wednesday night, another one on Saturday, then next Tuesday another one, then on Sunday again. It's what we want."

The goalkeeper has laid it out plainly. Liverpool have the players, they have the environment, and they have a manager working hard to get the best from them. Now they need the mentality on the pitch to match everything being built off it, and Tuesday night is the first chance to show it.