The banner draped over the away end at the Stade Gerland last night carried a simple and justifiable boast. “Liverpool FC — European Royalty”, it proclaimed in honour of the club’s rich continental heritage. If their glorious past is the result of the exploits of a cast of dozens, their future in this season’s Champions League was deemed to have come down to one, not totally fit, man.

Fernando Torres is used to carrying the hopes of thousands on his shoulders. He did it as a teenager at Atlético Madrid, when even his tender years did not reduce the expectation placed on him, a burden that he would later admit was too great for him to bear. Now Europe’s most lethal marksman is dealing with such immense pressure again, only now it is Liverpool’s dreams he is tasked with firing, groin strain or not.

In the aftermath of their defeat by Fulham on Saturday, Jamie Carragher encapsulated the situation when he warned that Liverpool would have “virtually no one” to lead their line without the Spain striker.

Carragher’s verdict may not have been a criticism of Liverpool’s paucity of attacking options — it was a reasoned analysis of the injury crisis that is threatening to derail their season — but it may as well have been, because the truth is that when Torres is unavailable, Liverpool become as toothless as Shane MacGowan, such is their lack of quality options in attack.

Who else could provide bite? Dirk Kuyt has long since been redeployed as an auxiliary right winger, having failed to excel as a central front man. David Ngog is talented but remains too inexperienced at this level to be given the onerous task of replacing Torres. While Andriy Voronin is, well, Andriy Voronin, a player who comes to life only in his comfort zone, otherwise known as the Bundesliga.

It is not quite Torres-pool, a re-enactment of the time in the 1950s when such was Liverpool’s dependence on Billy Liddell that the media took to renaming the team in honour of the legendary Scotland winger, but it is not far off it, particularly when Torres is asked to come up with the goods despite looking some way short of even the 80 per cent fitness of recent weeks.

For once, though, the moment of brilliance for Liverpool was not supplied by the flaxen-haired Spaniard. It came from Ryan Babel, a player who hitherto had done little to live up to his reputation as one of European football’s most promising youngsters, but who produced a goal that Torres would have been proud of.

Lisandro López’s equaliser changed everything, but by then Liverpool’s talisman had been withdrawn.