To take a side who have just won the league and make four major changes cannot be anything but a risk. There will always be at least some process of adaptation, particularly given the slight change of shape the arrival of Florian Wirtz has entailed.

The danger for Liverpool is that they give up points that could prove costly if this is a tight title race. While that transition goes on, results perhaps matter more than performances, so long as the trend of those performances is towards a greater cohesion.

Improvement certainly is needed. Liverpool cannot give up goals as easily as they did in the Community Shield and here if they are to defend their title. But they found a way to get the three points, the key goal coming from the most unlikely source of Federico Chiesa, and started the season with a win.

And for all the talk of personnel changes and tactics, the image of Mohamed Salah standing alone before the Kop after the final whistle, wiping the tears away with his cuff as fans sang the Diogo Jota song, was a poignant image of how difficult this season will inevitably be for Liverpool’s players.

It’s not invalid to talk of the mundanities of football – indeed it’s a necessary part of the process – but equally this served as a reminder that grief is woven inevitably through this season. The football soap opera will perhaps struggle to find a vocabulary to discuss something so personal, so unpredictable, so potentially debilitating, but that does not mean that it is not there.

The tributes before kick-off were moving and the minute’s silence for Jota and his brother reverently observed, but there was still a match to be played, for football, life, always goes on.

Some of Liverpool’s new signings, it’s fair to say, have settled in rather better than others. Hugo Ekitiké embellished the good impression he had made in the Community Shield, but Milos Kerkez is finding settling in rather harder. The 21-year-old Hungarian had an awkward afternoon last Sunday, dragged about by Ismaïla Sarr, and he no more enjoyed facing his former team-mate Antoine Semenyo.

There was a strange jitteriness to Kerkez throughout, as though he had begun to doubt himself and, in trying to rectify that with decisive contributions, had lost a degree of judgment. He was fortunate an early lunge on the Ghanaian made minimal contact but didn’t get away with an even wilder flying challenge on Adam Smith and was rightly booked.

Not, it should be said, that Andy Robertson fared much better, having replaced Kerkez on the hour. Semenyo had darted in front of Kerkez to meet a low cross from Adrien Truffert early on and it was a very similar move that led to Bournemouth’s first goal four minutes later, David Brooks this time delivering the cross. The sense perhaps is that whatever unease Kerkez may be feeling after his step up, there is also a broader tactical issue.

The Community Shield and this game maintained the pattern Liverpool had demonstrated during pre-season of looking very exciting going forward but far less impressive at the back. The adoption of a more man-to-man pressing system seems to have rendered them vulnerable to direct running into the tracts that are mystifyingly appearing behind or in front of the back four.

The equaliser was perhaps an extreme example as Semenyo surged 60 yards through mysteriously unoccupied space as Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté retreated before whacking his finish past Alisson. The shame is that what should have been an excellent night for Semenyo also involved him reporting an incident of racial abuse to the referee Anthony Taylor.

Ekitiké made a rather more positive impression, although, as in the Community Shield, there was bewilderment that having taken one chance supremely well, he then fluffed a seemingly easier opportunity soon after. The goal he scored, though, was remarkable as he received the ball with six Bournemouth players around him, bundled through Marcos Senesi and then finished with a calm certainty.

But more than the individuals the question mark is over the tweak to the system. Perhaps everything will look better when Ryan Gravenberch returns from suspension and can take up his place at the back of midfield. Certainly it’s hard to imagine him, whatever the dictats of the pressing system, leaving the centre of defence as exposed as it was for the Bournemouth equaliser. Dominik Szoboszlai has not convinced in the deeper role and it may be that his immediate future is as back-up to Wirtz.

One of the issues thrown up by the Community Shield was the isolation of Salah but that, at least, looks as though it may be readily resolved. His link-up with Jeremie Frimpong is a work in progress, but there were early signs of an understanding with Ekitiké and he played a decisive role in Liverpool’s late surge for victory, his cross leading, via a series of shots, blocks and half-clearances, to Chiesa’s volleyed goal before he got the fourth with a typically decisive finish.

This is a long way from the controlled Liverpool of last season but it remains, for now, a winning Liverpool.