If Jurgen Klopp can claim one significant victory from an underwhelming Liverpool season, it is that he has somehow turned recrimination into anticipation.
Confirmation of a place in the Europa League will come when Newcastle and Manchester United inevitably collect their final point, but the blame game for Liverpool's predicament was devised and executed in March.
As the players took the applause from the Kop after their final home game, club legends Roberto Firmino and James Milner serenaded in a red shirt for the last time, the appetite to revisit and dwell on the mistakes which made the top four such a forlorn hope had subsided.
Liverpool went into this season trying to squeeze the last out of their winning formula. They end it with Klopp having successfully road-tested fresh experiments.
Trent Alexander-Arnold's reinvention has brought instant rewards, Curtis Jones has made a breakthrough as a consistent first-teamer, and in Cody Gakpo Liverpool have found Firmino's natural heir.
May is a most peculiar month for a team to look and sound re-energised, but a season which could not end soon enough – when Liverpool were 12 points adrift of the top four with nine games left – has now concluded a month too soon. Klopp is left to curse all those dismal away days and wasted points earlier in the campaign when the mildest of improvements would have preserved top-four status.
He and his supporters have long since concluded how and where it went wrong this time. The next stage of his correcting it will be in the transfer market, the anticipation being that at least four players – three midfielders and a defender – will give fresh impetus to a side which has collected 22 of its last 24 points and no longer looks as beaten up as it did six weeks ago.
It is not so difficult to see how midfielders of Alexis Mac Allister and Mason Mount's profile will seamlessly blend into Klopp's tweaked formation, Liverpool evolving into even more of a technical, possession-based unit with Alexander-Arnold operating in midfield, while still reliant on their strikers and advanced midfielders to press and counter-press like the proverbial Duracell bunnies.
There is also no surprise that Klopp is looking for another defender given that Ibrahima Konate has too often been injured, and Alexander-Arnold's drifting means those behind him have extra responsibility to fill the gaps.
Aston Villa's organisation and tactical nous signposted where problems may yet emerge for Klopp, their early penalty a consequence of Ollie Watkins finding the space Alexander-Arnold vacated on Liverpool's right.
Saturday was also a day where despite their dominance in possession, there was a need for more creativity on those rare occasions that Alexander-Arnold's passing radar malfunctions.
But for those senior players resigned to a year without Champions League football, the deflation of European "relegation" is balanced by a renewed belief that, unlike last August, Liverpool will be ready to sprint from the blocks in three months' time.