Get in: Luke Varney scored Blackpool's secondRoy Hodgson has always insisted he needs time and money to steer Liverpool back to the top. The money disappeared long ago and, judging by the disarray on the pitch and growing hostility off it, time could be about to follow suit.
They have become accustomed to lending at Anfield, after the debt-ridden days of reviled owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and if there were any doubts that Hodgson is on borrowed time, little more than three months into his reign on Merseyside, they vanished at precisely 11 minutes to five yesterday afternoon.
A couple of minutes still remained, but the Kop had seen enough to deliver a damning verdict on the former Fulham manager's brief period in charge. It started as a rumble then began to grow clearer, painfully so for Hodgson, as patrons of English football's most famous vantage point chanted long and loud for Kenny Dalglish.
Hodgson may argue that Liverpool's five-man board are the ones who sit in judgment, but the sound of long-suffering fans calling for the man who openly declared his fervent wish to succeed Rafa Benitez had an ominous ring to it.
Reminded of it half an hour after the final whistle, Liverpool's beleaguered manager spread his arms wide and shook his head, as if to acknowledge his fate may be out of his own hands, with many more performances like this.
There were those arguing that one more may be enough, given that Everton are next up, at Goodison Park a week next Sunday. Patience is already at breaking point and may well snap under the strain of a derby-day humiliation.It is already the 18-time champions' worst start to a season since they were relegated 57 years ago and, significantly, even Hodgson made no attempt to gloss over their alarming shortcomings and try to portray their plight as anything other than desperate.
Liverpool may have dropped into the bottom three by virtue of Everton's first win of the season 24 hours earlier. This was their opportunity to extricate themselves, and they failed abjectly. Blackpool's fairytale rise to the Barclays Premier League was supposed to touch base with reality on days like these.
Trips to the bastions of the English game were meant to finish with the sort of drubbings inflicted on them by Chelsea and Arsenal, yet there was a worrying portent for Anfield regulars in the way Ian Hollway's side's visit was billed.
Never in their worst nightmares could they imagine it being described as a six-pointer, yet if there was any sense of indignation, it was hardly apparent.
Far from taking it out on the upstarts from a few miles up the North West coast, Liverpool found themselves on the wrong end of a football lesson in a barely believable, one-sided first half.
The role reversal was enough, for once, to lift Hodgson out of his seat in the dug-out and leave him standing, in increasing exasperation, on the edge of the pitch.
More high-profile, perhaps, but there was still little he could do, as he repeatedly stroked his chin and looked on pensively.
Dejected: Liverpool stars Gerrard and Kuyt during the defeatA thumping Charlie Adam free-kick forced a flying save from Pepe Reina in only the second minute, and the shocks just kept coming after that.
Fernando Torres's 10th-minute withdrawal with a groin problem was one, as was a sweeping 15th-minute move that almost produced a far-post goal for DJ Campbell and another crisp, incisive passing pattern that led to Luke Varney having a close-range shot blocked eight minutes later.
Glen Johnson's defensive deficiencies were cruelly exposed in the 29th minute, as Varney cut in from the left and was up-ended by a clumsy challenge for the clearest of penalties that Adam dispatched past Reina in front of a dismayed Kop.
More than 3,000 travelling fans at the Anfield Road end, and a section of the directors' box containing father and son Karl and Owen Oyston, erupted in disbelieving celebration.
Paying the penalty: Charlie Adam scores Blackpool's opener from the spotUnderstandable, perhaps, yet the evidence of their eyes should have told them a breakthrough was on its way.
There was no stopping Blackpool, and, after Campbell almost caught out Reina at his near post, Varney sprung the offside trap to latch on to a pass from lifelong Liverpool fan Gary Taylor- Fletcher and double their advantage with a cool finish past Reina.
Boos escorted the players off, but there was renewed hope for the hosts in the 53rd minute, when a piece of quick thinking by Steven Gerrard helped reduce the arrears.
Tussle: Christian Poulsen tackles Blackpool's Gary Taylor-FletcherAwarded a free-kick for a debatable handball, the Liverpool skipper took it before Blackpool's defence had the chance to organise themselves and saw Sotirios Kyrgiakos plant a header in off the underside of the bar.
That should have been the cue for a siege of the Blackpool goal, and an outcome to soothe the home crowd's anxieties, particularly in view of manager Holloway's ready admission that protecting their own area hardly counts as his side's strongest suit.Instead, there were few real concerns for Holloway's gallant team, despite Hodgson throwing on the unsettled Milan Jovanovic and repeatedly switching the likes of Dirk Kuyt and Joe Cole in a fruitless search for the cohesion needed to force an equaliser, at least.
Raul Meireles had a goalbound shot blocked, Cole fired agonisingly wide after being played through and, in the last minute of added time, keeper Matt Gilks brilliantly repelled a point-blank Kyrgiakos header.
By then, a packed but piqued Kop had reflected on the Northampton debacle and the shambles presented to them here and made up their minds.
'Dalglish,' they chanted, and it must have sent a shudder through the man Liverpool's board had turned to instead.
Uh oh! Fernando Torres came off injured and was replaced by David Ngogsource: dailymail
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