In the fabled words of Merseyside’s most famous foursome – no, not Hansen, Souness, Dalglish and Rush – it was truly a hard day’s night.

The first half of the Champions League final resembled the intense bursts of mid-Sixties creativity that produced the mighty trio of Beatles albums, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Liverpool were on top, Steven Gerrard was performing a passable impression of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jermaine Pennant did his understated George Harrison bit and Javier Mascherano was cast in the role of Ringo: nothing flashy but crucial to the overall sound. But after Filippo Inzaghi’s deflected goal just before the interval, a darker mood took hold – shades perhaps of the fractious sessions that produced the sprawling, disjointed White Album.

If Liverpool’s first European Cup win, in 1977 in Rome, was Please, Please Me (a delightful world-changing debut), then 1978 at Wembley was Beatles for Sale (frankly, a letdown), Paris in 1981 was surely Help! (acceptable but hardly a progression) and Rome in 1984 was Abbey Road (a resounding triumph against the odds).

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Background

• Luck runs out for Liverpool

• Dreams lie in ruins for Liverpool

• No way back for Liverpool

• How the teams rated

• Flood of forged tickets deepens fans' trauma

Multimedia

• European Cup Final 2007

• AC Milan v Liverpool clockwatch

Related Links

• Italian press quick to rub salt into the wound

• Not even Gerrard can produce final miracle

• Benitez turns attention to forward thinking

And Istanbul two years ago? That must surely have been Revolver, an extraordinary peak that will probably never be surpassed.

But the Beatles album that this hugely anticlimactic evening most closely resembled was Let It Be, the band’s doomed and damaged penultimate outing.

Obligingly, the disconsolate scenes of Liverpool players and supporters at the final whistle even provided a funereal black border, just like the cover of that era-ending recording.

As with Let It Be, the match had its moments of pure Scouse brilliance – the title track, The Long and Winding Road, Get Back, even the forced bonhomie of Two Of Us. But ultimately – and especially after Inzaghi had scored again – the songs instantly brought to mind were the frankly dreadful Dig a Pony, Maggie Mae and One After 909.

Famously, the sessions for Let It Be – intended by McCartney to be a joyful return to the thrill of live performance – ended in disarray, forcing Lennon to bring in Phil Spector, the producer, to make sense of hours of haphazard recording.

Last night Rafael BenÍtez cast Peter Crouch in the Spector role (a difficult picture to summon, admittedly), but he was unable to perform a similar rescue act – even with the help of a “wall of sound” coming from the Liverpool sections of the ground.

Conspiracy theorists among you may recall that during Dig It – one of the album’s many low points – Lennon performs an impromptu rap, intoning the names of people and institutions.

Untypically for a man – and a band – impervious to the joys of the beautiful game, he included a famous football name. It is not one ever celebrated on the Kop but that of “Matt Busby” (Lennon clearly did not recognise his knighthood), the first manager to bring the European Cup to England.

The most famous Scouser of all celebrating a manager of Manchester United – the Sixties must have been even weirder than we think.