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The excellence of Luis Suárez and Dirk Kuyt proved too much for a United defence missing Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic

Regardless of the many debates the game generated, one cannot disguise the excellence of Liverpool’s perfect birthday present for Kenny Dalglish. From back to front they were superior, more effective in their work with the ball and also showed great determination without it when they hunted United when they lost possession.

Their forward movement, revolving around the workaholic Dirk Kuyt, was most impressive. They ran enterprisingly, taking advantage of the space between the United centre-backs and their full backs. Raul Meireles and Maxi Rodríguez were important to this penetration, with Luis Suárez pulling the centre-backs around with his twisting brilliance, instigating the rhythm of Liverpool’s attacks. At times it was compelling stuff, reducing United, a technically better equipped group, to clear second best. The less-heralded players were on top form – Sotirios Kyrgiakos dominated in the air, Lucas balanced Steven Gerrard and Meireles and Maxi ran with great freedom.

The indefatigable Kuyt was central to everything Even Andy Carroll, in a brief cameo, made his point. United, shorn of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, compensated with experience in the midfield selection of Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, and with Berbatov up front.

Suárez, playing off the

• Liverpool’s caretaker manager talks of plans for next season
• Lucas reveals how Dalglish has got best out of Meireles

If you wanted a hint that Kenny Dalglish is no longer just for the short term it came when the Liverpool manager was debating the impact of the midweek friendlies on his side’s performance. Dalglish was arguing that the late-night flights carrying his players back to John Lennon Airport from Wednesday’s internationals had dulled Liverpool’s edge.

In fact, only four of his starting line-up – Raul Meireles, Lucas Leiva, Glen Johnson and Dirk Kuyt – had been seriously involved internationally, although Daniel Agger, injured in training with Liverpool after returning from England’s 2-1 win in Copenhagen, would have been a fifth. Wigan, who also had players away including Maynor Figueroa who returned from Honduras on Friday morning, had as much cause for complaint.

More interestingly, the man who is nominally in charge only until the end of May added: “We had a look at the fixtures for next season, which starts on 13 August, but there is a friendly on the 10th. That is a Wednesday but why not play it on a Tuesday? We could have the players for the extra day and that might be beneficial for everybody. They have tried it in the European Championship qualifiers, where they have played on Fridays and Tuesdays, so maybe they can change it for next season.”

Despite seeing Dalglish’s run of four straight wins grind to a stop against a Wigan side who have been a jagged thorn in Liverpool’s flesh for a number of seasons, there would be nobody at Anfield who would not want the Scot to continue.

In November Liverpool had drawn 1-1 with Wigan after a display against Chelsea that was as impressive as their victory at Stamford Bridge at the start of this month. That initial win over Chelsea was Roy Hodgson’s fourth in a row as Liverpool manager, a run that featured his only away league victory, at Bolton, and a jaw-dropping Steven Gerrard-fuelled comeback against Napoli. Finally, it seemed he could look further ahead than the next crisis only for the ground to be cut from beneath his feet for the last time.

Dalglish runs no such danger; he has too much credit in Liverpool’s bank and his is on the gold standard. Hodgson’s was based on IOUs and promissory notes. It might, however, have amused Hodgson as he sat in the directors’ box at The Hawthorns, watching his new charges dragged back to earth by West Ham, to have learned that Meireles had scored his fifth goal for Liverpool. None had been for him.

When asked why, the Wigan manager, Roberto Martínez, suggested that Meireles, coming from Portuguese football, would always have required time to adapt, the kind of time Hodgson was never offered. Lucas Leiva thought the answer lay in the way Dalglish employed him.

“He has given him a more advanced role and the belief to score goals,” he said. “The little advice he gives to us is massive. He wants us to play like Liverpool did in previous seasons. Every day he gives you a piece of advice that makes you think.”

Martínez, whose side earned a point when Steve Gohouri prodded in an equaliser, acknowledged this had been a different Liverpool from the one he encountered three months ago. Luis Suárez may know when to fall to the floor but his two drives against the frame of Ali al-Habsi’s goal were further proof he is an electric footballer. “The intensity they play with now is a lot higher and it makes it far more difficult to face them,” said Martínez. “You can see this Liverpool side plays with huge belief and the result they had at Chelsea shows that the players are starting to settle in.”

Martínez, unlike Dalglish, can only think in the short term. This was Wigan’s fourth game without defeat but only one was a victory and they face both Manchester clubs, Tottenham and Chelsea in their next five fixtures. Dalglish, the stopgap manager, knows what he will be doing on 13 August. Martínez will be far less certain.

Man of the match Luis Suárez (Liverpool)

Premier LeagueLiverpoolWigan AthleticTim Richguardian.co.uk

The once, current and possibly future king brings a straightforward, positive team mentality back to Anfield

For two decades English football has changed at dazzling pace, but for 90 minutes here we were back in 1991, when Kenny Dalglish posted his last win as Liverpool manager. On a bad pitch against macho opponents, a leader pulled from the fog of history revived the ancient Anfield virtues of verve and togetherness.

Seven minutes before the end of a restorative 3-0 win a low rumble of “Dalglish, Dalglish” started in the red sector of Molineux. The rescuer raised both arms. His players were about to concoct a 30-pass move that brought the previously hibernating Fernando Torres his second goal of the day. For a time this was a throwback fixture, a test of intestinal fortitude on a winter pudding that evolved, as so many Liverpool games did 20 or 30 years ago, into a display of superior pedigree.

Still wearing one of those duvet coats that real football men favour, Dalglish hasn’t altered much since stress drove him out of Anfield in 1991, a couple of games after a 3-1 home win over Everton, in February of that year: his last flourish as the heir to the bootroom heritage. That pained departure opened a void that Dalglish has now returned to fill. The third of his three league title wins was Liverpool’s last, in 1990, and the road since has been one of near-misses, false dawns and crises, provoked mainly by takeovers and instability.

“He’s enjoying a warmth and support that Roy didn’t have” Mick McCarthy, the Wolves manager said, in support of Roy Hodgson, who persuaded the game’s outstanding player, Raul Meireles, to join from Porto in the summer. “Roy Hodgson was the key because he worked so hard to get me here,” Meireles said before the change of manager, but Dalglish will yield the credit now for relocating the Portugal midfielder to an advanced role behind Torres, where Steven Gerrard also likes to hunt.

To wait two decades for a win at the club he embodies and which he wished he had never left has been a torment to Dalglish but now he stares from the dug-out with a good chance of reclaiming the job beyond May. To be catapulted back to the pre-Premier League era must have been dizzying? “My missus said that,” Dalglish told us. “She said – I’m sleeping with the Liverpool manager again, after 20 years.”

Hodgson’s successor has veered away from complexity and introspection in favour of the simpler values he absorbed in his reign as Liverpool’s finest player. “He just told us to trust each other, trust ourselves,” said Pepe Reina, the goalkeeper. With confidence slipping, Dalglish saw the need to bring the team’s under-achievers back up to the required standards, and used encouragement, his own charisma and a more positive tactical outlook to restore faith in and around the first-team squad.

“At the moment the feeling is of elation,” he said. “Everybody’s happy, because they’ve got the sensation they played as a team. It was only comprehensive at the end because of the hard work, determination and effort they put in throughout the game. They got the reward. I don’t think it was a phantom result. It’s a great credit to the players that they’ve kept their belief and their ambition to win football matches. They showed that today – because that was a really hard game.”

Torres and Meireles inspired this rare away win. El Niño, who is coming out of his trance, went mano a mano with Richard Stearman, the Wolves centre-back, and probed for space while Meireles orchestrated the best of Liverpool’s passing, ahead of Lucas Leiva and Christian Poulsen, who were noticeably more effective.

“It wasn’t just his goals, it was the work rate he put in,” Dalglish said of Torres. “The goal last week gave him a bit of heart, and Meireles is a good footballer. Coming into the Premier League in your first season it’s not easy to pick up the pace of it. Missing pre-season training with the club isn’t doing him any favours either. It was great for Christian Poulsen, too, who made a solid contribution until around the hour mark, when he started to tire because he hasn’t had many games. Raul, since we’ve been here, has been very impressive.

“They showed they’ve got a lot of pride in themselves and pride in the football club. The way they’ve responded to Sammy Lee, Steve Clarke and myself has been a great credit to them. They couldn’t have worked much harder than they did today.”

For every Liverpool disciple there is the fear that Torres has woken up to earn himself a move more than to impress Dalglish. But while “very amicable” conversations continue between manager and owners on the subject of reinforcements there remains a hope of persuading Torres not to scoot.

Modern football management is often cast as a mysterious compound of science, politics and psychology, but Dalglish made it seem much less esoteric, reconnecting points 20 years apart by reminding Liverpool who and what they are: or were, when he was last king.

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk