Liverpool lost ground to Manchester United in the Premier League after their 2-1 defeat on March 23. They also lost the services of Steven Gerrard and Martin Skrtel for three games each through suspension. Now it appears Daniel Sturridge has picked up yet another knock and could miss a month's worth of upcoming fixtures.
It might have been better for the club if they'd just handed United the points beforehand and rested for a few weeks. The loss of Sturridge might only have been delayed anyway since it was expected England duty would break him again. It usually does. Any limp or extended lie on the pitch now has fans suffering palpitations.
There is mounting frustration that Sturridge might never be the kind of player relied upon to play 50 or even 40 matches a season. It isn't just the number of injuries he picks up, it is the accumulative damage that further weakens his fitness year on year.
This comes coincidentally at a time when former striker Fernando Torres returned to Anfield, albeit just for a charity match on Sunday. He was another striker whose three years at the club resulted in a glut of goals that had fans comparing him to former greats like Ian Rush and Roger Hunt, only to lose him after far too short a time.
True, Torres chose to leave Liverpool for a better chance of success with Chelsea, but there were fears almost from day one that fitness problems might afflict his career. Rafa Benitez brought him to Liverpool in 2007 and from the beginning used squad rotation to make sure the former Atletico Madrid star was not broken by the more physical English game. A number of subsequent injuries and absences confirmed the managers' fears were well founded.
He was not the first modern-day striker to have disappointed the fans after a few years of relentless scoring. Robbie Fowler was the first. His goal rate and all-around talent were remarkable from 1993 to 1997, but a bizarre injury in the Merseyside derby put him out of the game for months.
There were glimpses of his great talent once he returned, but he never hit the same heights again. He was used sparingly in a second Liverpool spell under Rafa Benitez, but it was a brief postscript to what should have been one of the greatest careers in the club's history.
Michael Owen established himself as the club's No. 1 striker in 1997 and managed to stay prolific for seven years. That almost made him a veteran in comparison with other goal scorers at Anfield.
There were a lot of fitness doubts for Owen, too, in what was largely a fine Liverpool career. It was only after he decided to seek better fortunes elsewhere that those problems became major ones. He suffered two bad injuries when he was a Newcastle player and was never the same again. Like Torres, he also won honours after he left Liverpool, but they were also collected via the efforts of others rather than his own performances.
There was also the brief career of Djibril Cisse, who was signed by Gerard Houllier just before he was sacked in 2004. He then broke his leg weeks into his Liverpool career and although he managed to score 19 goals the following season, he was never a favourite of Benitez's and sadly broke his leg again, practically ending his brief Anfield stay.
Luis Suarez no sooner became a prolific scorer than he was already looking for the exit. A move to Arsenal fell through in the summer of 2013, but he was determined to leave and ultimately got his move to Barcelona after he received the third long ban of his all-too-brief Anfield stay.
With such a history, it's little wonder Liverpool fans don't envisage a happy ending for Sturridge either. One of the problems is that the club have become extremely dependent on such players. There is rarely a strike partner capable of easing some of the pressure to score goals, allowing the sort of recuperation that forwards need.
Pace is an important asset to such players and that explosive burst of speed often brings its own physical frailty if not managed properly. Sturridge has just come back from a very long layoff into a system that appears to need more chasing and work rate from its one true forward. Not only has he yet to come fully to terms with this change in a tactical way, he does not seem physically up to it either.
Fabio Borini, Rickie Lambert and Mario Balotelli simply haven't the talents to pick up some of the slack either. The use of Raheem Sterling as a forward worked well against Manchester City on March 1, but even he has good and bad days in front of goal. The lack of a second truly prolific striker really has hampered Liverpool's progress this season, especially when the No. 1 choice has been missing.
Will Sturridge ever truly be fit enough? His Liverpool career to date suggests not. The coming summer does not have an international tournament so this could be the three months' rest he needs to get ready for a new season.
Some will say he's just had five months off, which didn't do him much good, but there is something about summer rest and a gradual immersion into a football routine through gentle friendlies in July and August that prepares a professional far better for the upcoming slog.
He will clearly need a far better forward partner for the next season, too; and there is international football still to contend with. Perhaps the emergence of Harry Kane will lessen that burden, too?
Gerrard's charity match saw Suarez and Torres together for the first time, and even for a friendly there were a couple of tantalising glimpses of what might have been. Liverpool have been fortunate to have such gifted forwards, yet unlucky in the short amount of time they've stayed. Ambition, success and wealth are key to any footballer sticking around and that's what must change.
The chances of finding another Ian Rush, who will play for Liverpool for a dozen or more seasons and score 346 goals, are remote at best. Watching the likes of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi break all kinds of records at their mighty clubs does suggest that nothing is ever impossible.