HOME PARK, DEVON // Liverpool has after a shock defeat against Plymouth Argyle, the team sitting at the bottom of the Championship table.

After handball inside the penalty area, Ryan Hardie found the back of the net with a spot kick placed into the corner. And that proved to be the only goal of the game in the end, with Liverpool unable to find a way back having lost its way early on.

forced a decent save near the very end but there was nowhere near enough pressure applied to the Plymouth goal. Here are the five things spotted as the game unfolded.

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Plymouth head coach Miron Muslic described Liverpool as "the best team in the world" heading into the game and midfielder Callum Wright — a boyhood Reds fan — couldn't wait for kick-off. "It is a dream come true to get them at Home Park," he said.

"It’s going to be a good day. [ is] the reason I play football today. It is going to be tough, the best team in the world, but we have a gameplan and hopefully we can cause an upset."

Fellow Liverpool fan Adam Randall was captaining Plymouth and there were magical storylines aplenty. Liverpool knew that would need to be snuffed out but it never really got going.

"What they need to show is fight," Slot said before the game began, knowing how tough it would be. "All these games are tight so we know it is going to be tough. Even with our starters it would be a tough fixture. We have to play it like it's the final otherwise it will be tough to get a result over here."

Liverpool played at the tempo of a training session for much of the match and hardly created a chance. Perhaps, in hindsight, it was an error not to take one or two more senior players to use off the bench.

Liverpool can hardly complain too much about injuries this season but . The center-back went down after just eight minutes and the Reds never recovered from that disruption.

Trent Alexander-Arnold is already injured and could miss the Merseyside derby on Wednesday. Gomez, if he is now out for another spell, is another player who would have been useful with two matches a week coming up for the foreseeable future.

Gomez limped off and Liverpool limped through the game here. In a kind of foreshadowing for what was to unfold in the rest of the 90 minutes, losing a senior player was not good news — and proved to be far from helpful.

This was a big game for and . Both were on the more senior side in the starting team — made even more obvious when Gomez had gone off.

"I feel like I'm getting a bit old," Elliott told ITV Sport before the match. "Now there are 16-year-olds on our bench and hopefully they can come on and make a difference."

Neither he nor Chiesa really grabbed the chance by the scruff of the neck, though. The pair, signed for a combined sum of around $20m (£16m/€19m), struggled to get involved much and didn't particularly look up for the fight. They will both have left the field disappointed by their contributions, where there was a distinct lack of quality.

Young midfield duo and were handed another go from the start and Isaac Mabaya came off the bench early on. Each would have learned plenty from the experience.

Unlike the PSV match, this was not the kind of game that McConnell could thrive in. Nyoni looked much better against Southampton — another team that will try and play — than he did here. Mabaya, making his senior debut, did well enough but was booked which almost certainly contributed to him being taken off.

Ultimately, if any of the trio are players for the long-term at Anfield, they won't face a game, a pitch or a team like this very often. They came through the battle and the fault lies with those who are far more experienced.

In large parts, it has been a frustrating season for thanks to injuries. Nothing has been quite as infuriating for him as the first 45 minutes of this game, though. Outnumbered by the three-man Plymouth defense, he was unable to get a kick.

Things did not look up that much in the second half either. He improved slightly near the end — with his first shot coming in the third minute of added time — but was isolated and needed some help. Plymouth defended well but he needed a bit more from Elliott and co behind him.

Jota only needs one chance to score a goal but he never got a proper one. Liverpool must switch focus to the other competitions now — do that and this embarrassment will swiftly be forgotten. That starts with Everton on Wednesday night.