English FA Premiership: Roy Keane was the last Manchester United player to depart the turf here, the Irishman busying himself offering consolatory handshakes to crestfallen opponents before raising his arms in triumph towards the Anfield Road end.
"We will keep fighting for this title right until the end," he said. "We're Manchester United. That is what we do."
This is what Keane does best. At 33, his battle-scarred knees creaking and intermittent breathers from the first team only reluctantly accepted, the United captain remains a colossus around which Liverpool could not skirt on Saturday.
Ambition still smoulders in the midfielder's eyes, defiance driving him on with Chelsea still a distant 11 points away. To witness this monumental display was to accept that a Keane-inspired United are likelier to emerge as Jose Mourinho's principal challengers in the run-in than an Arsenal team suddenly prone to stutter.
Winning at Anfield is becoming an annual event for Alex Ferguson, this the first time in United's history that they have triumphed here three years in succession. If the hosts were not deflated by Jerzy Dudek's desperate error which conceded Wayne Rooney the lead, then the manner in which Keane crunched into Steven Gerrard's trademark leggy maraud forward just after the hour, emerging in possession with his opponent juddered by the violence of the block, was confirmation that the visitors were not to be broken. Even with Wes Brown dismissed for two bookable offences, Keane would not countenance failure.
"Every time I come here I wonder whether it will be my last game at Anfield," said the visitors' captain. "I'd not played for the last week or two, but it seemed a lot longer." He battered a volley against the bar late in the first half, though it was the manner in which he - flanked by the impressive Paul Scholes - snuffed out Gerrard and Dietmar Hamann which chiselled out victory.
Rooney conjured the goal, for all that his punt from distance should have been blocked by Dudek. The striker's reaction after 21 minutes of incessant abuse from the home partisans was to cup his ears towards the Kop, apparently provocatively given that complaints were made to police.
The referee Steve Bennett has mentioned the celebrations in his report, though he has recommended no other sanction than a gentle reminder that inflammatory ripostes are best avoided. More worrying was the missile - a mobile telephone - flung from the crowd at the 19-year-old, which prompted Merseyside police to make one arrest on Saturday night.
The home fans' frustration was understandable because their team's inferiority was painfully obvious. If United plucked the only goal from a period when Liverpool were indeed in the ascendance, as Rafael Benitez asserted, then that passage of play still did not yield a meaningful threat to Roy Carroll's goal. The goalkeeper was tested only in stoppage-time, Jamie Carragher side-footing Gerrard's free-kick and Carroll, initially unsighted, reacting well to claim.
United have now gone seven games without conceding a goal. "That is breeding confidence," said Keane. "If you keep a clean sheet you have always got a chance because, with the players we've got, we are always going to create chances.
"The goal gave us something to hold on to and I think we picked them off a little bit, especially in midfield. They kept getting people in the box and Roy made a decent save towards the end but, all in all, maybe we just about edged it." That was an understatement. This was a disciplined and resolute United display to deflate Liverpool. Benitez bemoaned a "lack of experience" in his side, though the presence of Mauricio Pellegrino, Fernando Morientes, Sami Hyypia, Hamann, Gerrard and Carragher suggests otherwise.
Arsenal have lost at Anfield this season, and Chelsea were fortunate to depart with a victory. Ferguson can take heart that his side of the trio have impressed in these parts most of all.
