Liverpool head to Spain this week to take on European champions Real Madrid in a game that few -- if any -- give them any shot of winning.

Brendan Rodgers' side are big underdogs, and hope among Kopites generally goes only as far as praying that it's not a complete humiliation. It's often said that football is "a funny old game," however, and it can certainly throw up shock results when you least expect it. That appears to be the only thing Liverpool have to cling to going into Tuesday's Group B fixture against the Spanish giants. If they can't contain Sammy Ameobi, Rolando Aarons and Ayoze Perez, what hope do they have against Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema?

If they aren't there already, then at the very least Liverpool are on the brink of a full-on crisis. "We'll look at it after 10 games, see where we are at," said Rodgers a few weeks ago. Well, 10 games have now been played, and the league table doesn't make for pleasant viewing if you're a Liverpool fan. It's not as though the Reds have had the most difficult of starts, either -- with the exception of the trip to Manchester City, most of Liverpool's more testing fixtures have still to be played -- yet they have been beaten four times already, including a home loss to an Aston Villa side who followed that up with six consecutive defeats.

Their Champions League form has been even worse. Liverpool scraped a 2-1 victory at home to unfancied Ludogorets thanks to a stoppage-time penalty kick from Steven Gerrard, but have since lost in disappointing fashion to FC Basel before being humbled 3-0 at Anfield by a Madrid side that barely needed to break a sweat.

The loss to Newcastle at the weekend was a new low, a completely inept display at both ends of the pitch. That non-performance was the perfect illustration of all that has been wrong with Liverpool this season.

They continue to let in poor goals but no longer have the attacking prowess to overcome it, and almost overnight they have gone from the stuff of opposing goalkeepers' nightmares to one of the easiest teams in the land to defend against. As poor as Liverpool's defending has been, their attacking play has arguably been worse. Daniel Sturridge can't return quickly enough, but will his fragile body be able to cope with carrying the hopes of an entire club? Raheem Sterling can help share the burden, but not when he's bizarrely being used as some kind of hybrid wing-back as he was at St James' Park.

How Liverpool will approach the Madrid game is anybody's guess, but attack would appear to be the best form of defence where the Merseysiders are concerned. They don't have the option of trying to keep it tight and playing for a draw; that's not in their makeup, as they cannot defend to a high enough standard to play that way, and it goes against everything Rodgers stands for.

I admire Rodgers' attacking philosophy, and while some would understandably argue that there are times when you need to be more pragmatic and know how to shut up shop, as a general rule I find it difficult to be critical of a manager for being "too attack-minded." I've always been an advocate of the "he who dares wins" approach to football, and that is one of the many reasons I enjoyed last season so much. Of course I want to see Liverpool become better defensively, but I don't want to see them become "more defensive" in order to achieve that. The defence is obviously a big problem, but it's being magnified by the hopelessness currently being displayed at the other end.

Mario Balotelli is copping most of the flak for that, but much of the criticism coming his way is unfair. Of course he has been disappointing, but he is repeatedly being played in a system that does not suit him. He's an easy target, but the finger should be pointed at Rodgers and whoever it was that somehow managed to talk him into thinking it was a good idea to sign a player who is as far removed in terms of playing style from the man he replaced as it's possible to be.

Yes, Mario has to do better, but if Rodgers is going to persist with him (and he appears to have very little choice right now) then he needs to start putting the Italian in a situation that utilizes his strengths rather than one that magnifies his weaknesses. Giving him a partner up front who can stretch a defence by making the kind of runs in behind that he doesn't would certainly help, and as I wrote last week, that should be Sterling until Sturridge is ready to return.

These are testing times for the Liverpool boss, and back-to-back fixtures against Real Madrid and Chelsea are probably the last thing he needs right now. Even the trip to Selhurst Park a week later looks to be just as difficult, given Liverpool's current form.

Of course, Brendan being Brendan, he knew this was going to happen, saying last week: "We lost a world class talent and the natural progress of the team was halted -- we needed the squad rebuilt. I think where we are is what was expected. The players we brought in [over the summer] were not really established.

"That decision was made knowing they might struggle a bit initially but further in the future would be big players for the club. That is where we are right now."

That isn't what he was saying back in the summer, but when you talk as much as he does it's inevitable that some of those words will eventually make you look foolish.

To be fair, it can happen to the best of us; for example, I wrote a couple of months ago that Liverpool "have not done a Spurs" with the Luis Suarez money. Don't I look the fool now, although technically they probably haven't "done a Spurs" as their summer splurge is looking even worse than that of Tottenham's 12 months ago; at least they got Christian Eriksen out of it. Significantly, Spurs only dropped one place in the table and finished just three points behind the tally they managed in Gareth Bale's last season at White Hart Lane. Not even the most optimistic of Liverpool fans would predict a similar outcome for the Reds this year.

For now Kopites will settle for getting through these next two games without suffering further humiliation and who knows, perhaps defying the odds by picking up a point or two along the way. The fact that merely avoiding defeat in either game would be seen as a big upset is a sad indicator of how wrong it's gone in such a short space of time.