Even if the afternoon had yielded a game of mesmerising content and unrelenting excitement, the talk afterwards would have embraced nothing more potent than the condition of a young man's hamstrings.
Not just any young man, of course. No, most certainly not. The saga of Michael Owen's battered leg muscles is becoming almost Agatha Christie-esque in its complexity - The Strange and Mysterious Case of the Golden Child Gone Lame.
Owen's hamstrings have pulled, snapped, strained and bruised with such regularity over the past nine months or so that it is annoyingly easy to treat flippantly a problem which, having already dramatically reduced Liverpool's potency, may yet inflict untold harm on England's summer aspirations.
A game so wretched that it could not muster a single shot on target until its merciful end was in sight had crawled to its 28th minute when Owen delivered an orthodox cross from the right. As the cross went the way of all Saturday's crosses - away from those players in whose direction it had been aimed - Owen remained seated on the Anfield turf.
Briefly, and probably painfully, he stretched his legs out before him before rising to indicate to his manager on the touchline that, again, his day's work was prematurely at an end.
As he walked slowly and deliberately back towards the halfway line he shouted, "hamstring" to the sea of ashen faces in the Liverpool dug-out.
Shortly after the watching England coach, Kevin Keegan, had departed for home, Gerard Houllier was called upon to discuss the fragile nature of Owen's lower limbs.
Now, he may have been tramping around familiar territory but the Frenchman was quite noticeably perturbed, quickly and wisely abandoning his attempt to convince his audience that black was in fact white and that damaged muscle could be described as healthy muscle.
"Obviously, we are a bit worried but I am sure our medical team will sort it out soon," he said with no discernible conviction. "It is not the same muscle as the last time but one in the same group of muscles. It doesn't look too serious." Houllier's key contribution to the great debate was to come when he was invited to hazard a guess as to when Owen would next be asked to slip into comeback mode.
"We do not have a game next weekend so I hope he'll be back for the game against Leeds United in a fortnight - or maybe for the Arsenal game after that one," he said.
Quite clearly, all is not well and the possibility of Owen being returned to Munich for the laying on of sports injury specialist Hans Muller Wohlfahrt's healing hands cannot be discounted.
Owen was actually better off out of this morass of incompetence for Liverpool could have played forever and a day and still not found a way through Middlesbrough's smartly drilled defence.
Paul Ince's lack of grace after he was thrown out of Liverpool last summer was astonishing - he called for Houllier to be sacked - but he is now a player in sharp decline.
Even so, he was to enjoy the game's solitary clear-cut chance. After being released by Juninho, Ince should have gone on to score but, believing himself to be offside, he hesitated, allowing the goalkeeper Sander Westerveld to save with his feet.
LIVERPOOL: Westerveld, Carragher, Hyypia, Henchoz, Matteo, Thompson (Murphy 57), Hamann, Gerrard, Berger, Smicer (Newby 76), Owen (Meijer 28). Subs Not Used: Staunton, Nielsen.
MIDDLESBROUGH: Schwarzer, Mustoe, Festa, Pallister, Vickers (Gavin 68), Fleming, Cooper, Ince, Summerbell, Juninho, Campbell (Ricard 82). Subs Not Used: Beresford, Maddison, Kilgannon. Booked: Juninho, Ince, Ricard.
Referee: S Dunn (Bristol).
