FOR a character as normally reserved as Rafael Benitez, it was a gesture akin to stripping down to his underwear and running down Anfield Road reciting from his famed list of facts.

As the final whistle blew on a frantic, bad-tempered derby, the Liverpool manager rose from his seat, calmly saluted all four sides of the ground before turning towards the directors box and pumping his fist in celebration.

Such defiance encapsulated an afternoon on which the Spaniard had seen his team drag itself from the precipice before conjuring an unlikely yet deserved victory against the odds.

Having returned to the Champions League places for the first time since October, it’s a triumph that could prove a pivotal moment in the attempts of Benitez’s side to salvage the bare minimum from a hugely underwhelming Premier League campaign.

And with it comes the added satisfaction that, for all their troubles on and off the field, Liverpool remain the dominant force on Merseyside.

Because if ever that status was going to be seriously threatened, it was on Saturday.

The noises emanating from Goodison before the game had only been positive. Buoyed by a nine-match unbeaten league run since defeat to Liverpool in November and with his injury list having almost cleared, David Moyes even found fit to dwell on the increasing financial difficulties across Stanley Park while suppressing a wry smile.

This was Everton’s time. The time for them to end a wait for victory at Anfield that stretched for more than a decade. The time for them to prove the gap to their neighbours was closing fast.

Liverpool, shorn of key creative players such as Fernando Torres and struggling to cling on to their top four place, were there for the taking, a suspicion strengthened by the 34th-minute red card shown to Sotirios Kyrgiakos.

Yet when opportunity knocked, Everton went missing. It has become an all-too-familiar derby story under Moyes.

The Goodison manager’s post-match assertion that his team didn’t feel like losers kidded nobody. Everton lost. Their fans certainly felt as though they’d lost. And Moyes’s men have only themselves to blame for passing up the chance to copper-bottom their winter revival with the most prized of scalps.

Almost four years ago, the early dismissal of Steven Gerrard at Anfield galvanised Liverpool to deliver a stirring, passionate performance that the visitors simply could not match, and it was the same story here.

Defensive organisation, steely determination and a collective belief, qualities so often associated with Moyes’s side, proved the difference once again for Liverpool, their need seemingly the greater.