Brendan Rodgers' team head into the final game of the season with a chance of lifting the title for the first time in the Premier League era, but dropped points against Chelsea and - quite remarkably - Crystal Palace over the past fortnight handed the initiative back to leaders Manchester City.
A draw at home to West Ham will be enough for City to claim a second league crown in three years - Manuel Pellegrini's men are two points clear at the summit and 13 better off than Liverpool on goal difference.
The odds are that the recent wave of euphoria at Anfield will be replaced by a sense of what might have been but City's near miss on the final day against lowly QPR two years ago, along with the wildly unpredictable nature of this season's title race, means events at the Etihad Stadium will be monitored keenly.
Irrespective of this weekend's outcome, the swashbuckling nature with which Liverpool chalked up 11 consecutive wins to put them in pole position for a first league crown in 24 years and secure a UEFA Champions League return will be one of the campaign's abiding memories.
By the same token, Chelsea's clinical 2-0 win on Merseyside to check their momentum and the defensive horror-show that turned Monday's handsome 3-0 lead at Palace into a dramatic 3-3 draw look set to be the kind of defining moments the Anfield masses did not have in mind.
He told Liverpool's official website: "To be successful, you have to be able to lose. If you look over the years, the great winners have been teams and individuals that have lost but have gone on and became a champion again.
"We've made great strides this season and there's still another game to go.
"If anyone had said to us in August about being top going into the last week of the season (Liverpool led by a point before City beat Aston Villa 4-0 on Wednesday), we would have taken that. We've qualified for the Champions League, but we know there is an awful lot of work here that we want to achieve."
Last Saturday's 3-0 win to relegate Cardiff City ended a run of six consecutive losses, during which time they scored just once.
For the hosts, prolific striker Luis Suarez - voted the Professional Footballers' Association's Player of the Year - will set a record for the most goals in a 38-game Premier League season if he finds the net on Sunday.
