The tragedy of the second half of the season is that one by one all of the competitions that you're still participating in slowly reach their end points. Knocked out of the League Cup and Europa League, Liverpool's back to back losses against Manchester United and Arsenal have, for all intents and purposes, effectively ended the club's attempts to secure Champions League football for the second time under Brendan Rodgers.
Sure, mathematically there is still hope, but with this year's league aspirations mostly unattainable at this point, there's little left to play for except pride and perhaps experimenting with what might work for next season. But there's the little matter of the FA Cup to contend with, and Philippe Coutinho isn't giving it up that easily.
"Winning the cup would save our season," the Brazilian said. "It is very important for us to have that as an objective. We have to pick ourselves up after what happened against Arsenal to get the results that we need.
"It would be a successful season to finish fifth and win the cup, but we want to be in the Champions League. That is our primary objective. We have seven games left and we have to see what happens."
But before Liverpool can focus on those remaining seven league matches and try to salvage as many points as possible, they travel to Blackburn on Wednesday for the replay of their sixth round FA Cup tie. There are absolutely no guarantees for Liverpool's FA Cup aspirations give the club's current form and their failure to dispatch Blackburn during the first match, but with Aston Villa waiting in the semi-final, Liverpool's path to silverware is about as smooth as it could possibly be.