Looking tired and lacking ideas, Liverpool toiled against Newcastle United at Wembley. From the moment Dan Burn powered his team into the lead by beating Alexis Mac Allister in the air from a corner, the result only felt like it was going one way.
Substitute Federico Chiesa did offer a glimmer of hope by scoring late on in stoppage time — after what should have been a straightforward VAR check took an age — but had Liverpool found a way to squeeze another goal over the line to somehow force extra-time, it would have been unjust. Newcastle was clearly the deserved victor.
That it was only Chiesa who really came out of the final with much credit tells its own story about how the game unfolded. And in the aftermath of his cameo, plenty of Liverpool fans were quick to ask the same question.
READ MORE: 'I saw Virgil van Dijk gesture ignored as Arne Slot now knows two Liverpool summer needs'
READ MORE: Micah Richards offers theory for poor Mohamed Salah display vs Newcastle - 'Don't forget'
If he plays like that, why has the Italian, signed from Juventus last summer in a cut-price deal worth an initial $13.0m (£10.0m/€11.9m), only played 25 minutes in the Premier League? Why has he been overlooked so often by Arne Slot?
It is legitimate to query whether the Liverpool head coach should have rotated his team more throughout the season with several players now looking exhausted. But even though Chiesa is thought, privately, to be desperate to prove his worth at Anfield despite persistent links with a swift exit, that doesn't tell the full story.
Chiesa is one of those who perhaps could have been brought into the team more often. Wataru Endo is another who falls into that category, though Harvey Elliott is the player who can feel most hard done by. He is the only one of the trio who has a track record of showing that he can perform the duties being asked of him in the Slot style.
It is not as if the Liverpool coach hasn't already explained his decision regarding the fringe players, either, even if his refusal to field Chiesa has felt a little blunt at times. "These players hardly train with the starters if you look at our schedule in the last three or four months," he said in his press conference on Friday.
"So if we play for example on Saturday and then we play on Tuesday again, then on Sunday the ones that played on Saturday only do a recovery session, so they’re not on the pitch.
"And then it’s the day before the game and it’s maybe 10, 15 minutes of tactics, where it’s more walking football than playing football. So there’s hardly ever a moment when they can compete with each other."
With no other choice, Virgil van Dijk playing as a striker, and Elliott and Curtis Jones essentially a midfield two as Liverpool tried to throw the kitchen sink at Newcastle late on, Chiesa was belatedly turned to and he delivered. But while he did well to score and looked reasonably lively, it is far too knee-jerk to suggest he should have played a much bigger role this year.
The 26-year-old made no impression against Plymouth Argyle a few weeks back and while he scored against Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup, Slot was quick to make the point that it was against a League Two team. That isn't enough evidence to give him minutes in more meaningful fixtures, especially ahead of Mohamed Salah.
This is the first time he has shown some real pace and intensity in a Liverpool shirt. While Luis Diaz has faltered in recent weeks and Cody Gakpo has been injured, that wasn't the case earlier in the campaign. Picking an unproven Chiesa ahead of either would, until the last fortnight, have been madness.
There is a balance to be found — has Chiesa played so few minutes because he has been poor, or has he been so poor because he has no rhythm from playing so few games? It's simply too early to tell.
He can, without question, still be a success for Liverpool, but to suggest he has been hard done by this season would be rewriting history. The real test will be next season, once he has fully acclimatized and had a full summer to get some proper work under his belt and that competition with his teammates that Slot spoke about has time to happen.
As Liverpool's attack faces questions, Darwin Nunez looks highly unlikely to be part of the long-term plan and increasingly, it looks like Jota is struggling to re-establish himself too. Will Chiesa have to move on as well, though, or can he still show what he did at Wembley for Liverpool more often? It's going to take patience, and only in several more months will we know for sure.
