A damaging 2-0 defeat to Red Star Belgrade in Serbia sealed Liverpool's worst away run in Europe's elite club competition in 39 years and made qualifying from Group C that bit harder.
Two first-half strikes from Milan Pavkov, a 24-year-old scoring his first European goals in only his 11th appearance, were enough to beat the off-colour Reds.
A third successive Champions League away defeat, taking into account May's semi-final reverse in Rome, equalled the run of 1979 which was 'achieved' over three seasons, not three successive matches.
It posed plenty of questions for manager Jurgen Klopp, whose decision to leave Xherdan Shaqiri, of Kosovar-Albanian parentage, at home in order to lessen local hostilities, had no bearing on this performance.
Re-live all the action below:
Team news:
Red Star Belgrade
Borjan, Stojkovic, Savic, Degenek, Rodic, Krsticic, Jovancic, Srnic, Marin, Ben Nabouhane, Pavkov
As it stands:
Liverpool are currently top of Group C and are now favourites to progress as group champions.
They humbled Red Star Belgrade 4-0 two weeks ago at Anfield and defeat for the home side tonight, if Napoli also beat Paris St-Germain, would eliminate them from the competition.
But Red Star coach Vladan Milojevic hopes home advantage will be an asset to his side, he said:
"We know that we did not have the support of our fans for the previous two matches, [when they were banned by Uefa after pitch invasions and fireworks]
"Everyone knows what it means to play at the Marakana (as the stadium is locally known), no-one feels comfortable with it, and it puts wind in our sails, because the atmosphere is much different than at other stadiums."
