Earlier this week a contractual post-match interview given by Jurgen Klopp to a Scandinavian TV company in the wake of Liverpool's 3-2 Premier League defeat at Arsenal circulated online.
'It is such a hard watch, he is heartbroken,' stated one publisher's tweet, above a screengrab taken from the interview that appeared to show the Liverpool manager wiping away a tear.
The rather more underwhelming truth – revealed when the footage is actually watched – is that Klopp was not crying. He was rubbing his eye.
It was, in fact, a standard Klopp interview given at the end of another bad afternoon in the Premier League.
But this is Klopp's life right now. Perhaps more than ever before in his seven years at Anfield, Klopp is under intense, microscopic scrutiny.
Liverpool are tenth in the league table after a dreadful start to the season and will in all likelihood be in the bottom half by the time they host Manchester City on Sunday afternoon.
The reaction on social media has been hysterical. It usually is. But a whiff of that has drifted in to the mainstream, too.
'At some stage, we will have that discussion about the manager and I'm not sure how far we are off that,' said Liverpool Champions League winner Didi Hamann, on the back page of one tabloid on Tuesday.
Klopp gave that one short shrift when asked in Glasgow later that day at a Champions League media briefing and his team's subsequent 7-1 embarrassment of Rangers said more than any words ever could about the enduring capabilities – on their day – of the German's team.
But this is the thing about Liverpool's season. They have beaten one team, Bournemouth, 9-0 and now another one 7-1 and it is not even Halloween. They do still have their days. But in between it has been messy.
So far they have failed to follow one win with another and have conceded the opening goal in six of their eight league games.
If City beat Liverpool this weekend, they will be sixteen points ahead of their great rivals and any remaining thoughts of a red title challenge will be extinguished.
'Of course the Rangers win changed the mood, but I only said it because I got asked the question,' said Klopp, rather flatly, on Friday.
'We will give it a try on Sunday with Anfield behind us against the best team in the world.'
Manchester City probably are the best team in the world and have been improved immeasurably by the signing of the forward Erling Haaland.
Over the past four years Liverpool have matched Pep Guardiola's team almost point for point. At the climax of another compelling title race last May, City's cumulative total since the start of the 2018/19 season stood at 338 points. Liverpool were a single point behind.
But the problem with keeping pace with City is that a team must effectively sprint to stand still. As such it's exhausting. Liverpool look tired already this season and at times so has their manager.
But to talk of a coach running out of time, energy or enthusiasm is ridiculously premature and if ever there was a time for a club and a city – half of it at least – to close ranks and stand behind their manager then it is now.
There is an enduring modern tension between City and Liverpool and much of it blows one way, from east to west.
City have understandable beef with their rivals over individual incidents such as the attack on their bus that preceded a Champions League meeting at Anfield in 2018 but they also resent the manner in which they feel Klopp's team have been feted by the media.
This, too, is understandable but the truth is that, for all the brilliance of Guardiola's team, there have been long periods in recent years when to visit Anfield was to have the most prized ticket in football, when watching Klopp's Liverpool was akin to breathing oxygen of hitherto unexplored purity.
Viewed through the prism of this and some of the low points of Liverpool's three decades without a league title, it is not hard to understand the esteem in which Klopp continues to be held at Anfield.
Ahead of kick-off at Ibrox on Wednesday, there was no discernible dissent among the rank and file. Liverpool's hard core remember where their club have come from.
They remember Roy Hodgson suggesting they were 'not too big for a relegation fight' in 2010. They remember losing home and away to Blackpool that season just as they do Brendan Rodgers' team being dismantled 6-1 at Stoke on the final day of the 2015 campaign.
Nevertheless, the fact is that even the best teams do sometimes need time to replenish and come again and so do individuals.
City themselves fell on their face under Roberto Mancini after their first Premier League title win in 2012 and even Guardiola's team lost nine games in conceding the championship by a distance to Liverpool in 2020.
But perhaps the most relevant parallel is to be found buried in the history of another great Liverpool rival, Manchester United.
After winning their sixth Premier League in eight years in 2003, Sir Alex Ferguson's team won merely a League Cup and an FA Cup in the three years that followed. In Europe, they failed to make it beyond the last-16.
Ferguson has subsequently described it as a 'horrible time' and a 1-0 defeat at Lille in the Champions League in 2005 as 'my lowest point for many years'.
As decorated as he was, Ferguson found himself under huge pressure. Some in the media questioned his age, others his judgement.
On the morning of the 2006 League Cup final that was to be won 4-0 against Wigan, the usually steadfast Independent accused United of 'stumbling through a desert' and suggested rather bravely that 'only triumph today stands between Ferguson and a swift retirement'.
But for United back then, as it is for Liverpool and Klopp now, one of the key issues was regeneration. Players, no matter how gifted, do not go on forever.
United were readying themselves for the decline of Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs just as Klopp is already dealing with the departure of Sadio Mane and the changing capabilities of experienced but older players such as Roberto Firmino, James Milner, Jordan Henderson and even Mohamed Salah.
'I knew where we were going but I also knew I needed time,' Ferguson subsequently reflected on a return to eminence that brought him a further five league titles and another Champions League on the back of recruiting players like Patrice Evra, Nemanja Vidic and Park Ji-sung.
In his heart, Klopp knows what Liverpool's problems are now. He needs time, for sure.
The development of players of huge promise such as the forward Darwin Nunez and midfielders Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho cannot be accelerated just because Liverpool's need is suddenly so great.
Haaland came from the Bundesliga, Nunez from Portugal's Liga. The difference cannot be over-stated.
Equally, though, Klopp needs a return to some standard values and standards. He was right when he said his team hadn't played badly at Arsenal. They also played well in patches losing at United in August.
But Liverpool's defensive surety has evaporated. They have conceded 12 league goals already and six in Europe. Many are too similar, such as Arsenal's first and the one conceded to Rangers as they briefly fell behind on Wednesday.
The gap between Liverpool's midfield and back four gets wider every week while concerns over the form of Trent Alexander Arnold and Virgil van Dijk are real.
In winning the league in 2020, Liverpool conceded more than one goal in a game only twice before clinching the title. Already this season, it has happened four times and with injuries to Alexander-Arnold and Joel Matip now adding to Klopp's problems, this a run of league form that may well get worse before it gets better.
Klopp spent seven years at his two previous clubs Mainz and Borussia Dortmund. Last Saturday marked the seventh anniversary of his time at Liverpool. Cue more neat comparison, assumptions and questions.
Is he burned out once again?
Those who work with him and under him say there is little evidence of the draining of the battery. That did happen, to an extent, in Germany. It has not happened here, not yet. Last season he signed a new contract.
Back in the day, as things slipped away in his final traumatic season at Dortmund, they asked the same things they ask now.
Does Klopp's intense gegenpress style of football lead to injuries and tiredness? Is there are a Plan B?
Dortmund conceded early goals back in 2014/15, too, and then struggled to break down teams subsequently sitting deep.
They also mourned the loss of a star player to Bayern Munich. For Mane in summer 2022, read Robert Lewandowski in summer 2014.
'How can you keep faith with your ideas if results continue to go completely the wrong way?' reflected former Dortmund defender Mats Hummels to Klopp biographer Raphael Honigstein in 2017.
So far, so neat. But Klopp has subsequently spent seven years at Anfield proving to a new audience that his methods do work. Last season comprised 63 games and took Liverpool to the doorstep of an unprecedented four trophies.
Prior to a narrow and unjust Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid, Liverpool had lost three games – all by the only goal – all season. If that isn't proof of a manager and a team still at the top their game then it's hard to know what is.
Things can change quickly in football, for sure, and at Anfield they have. Klopp simply has too many players currently not playing well. In public he's been prickly at times but is there a manager who isn't?
And where it matters, on Merseyside, support remains steadfast.
In Liverpool, independent new media is consumed just as voraciously as the mainstream and one panellist on the Redmen TV station this week described Klopp's positioning of the club back at the top of the Premier League as 'the biggest achievement of any manager in our history'.
Klopp has lived through unique times already at Anfield. The Premier League has never before witnessed a team so savagely and brutally consistent as Guardiola's City.
Liverpool's ability to stand toe to toe with them for so long will one day be viewed as the astonishing achievement it really is.
City may win on Sunday. On recent evidence, they probably should. But Klopp's years at Anfield are not ready to end in tears, either real or imagined. There should not even be a question of that.
On the day he managed his final Dortmund home game on May 23 2015, supporters hung a banner on the southern terrace of the Westfalenstadion.
It simply said: 'It takes years to understand how valuable something can be.'