Steven Gerrard's late strike completes below-par Liverpool’s escape act

Liverpool (1) 2 Middlesbrough (1) 1

It was such a lovely story and one that has been played out so many times in the Liverpool of Rafael Benitez. The shot from 20 yards smashed into the net, the whistle went and Steven Gerrard, his arms outstretched, drank in the sounds of Anfield having rescued his club once more.

It might have been Olympiakos in 2004; it might have been the FA Cup final in 2006; the picture could have been taken at any time on Liverpool’s run to last year’s European Cup final in Athens. Gerrard’s magazines of choice are Zoo and Nuts but he really ought to dig out of few copies of Boy’s Own.

In a twist that has hardly been a feature of the Benitez years, the equaliser had been the product of a wild, deflected shot from the side’s other Scouser, Jamie Carragher, who averages a goal every 120 league games.

The crowds could empty out happily into the familiar August rain, they could shelter under their manager’s remarks that it is surely better to play poorly and win than the other way round. Or they could tell themselves they had just seen another dollop of red Polyfilla smeared across the cracks in Benitez’s Liverpool.

Frankly, Middlesbrough, neat, compact and adventurous, would have been disappointed to have left Merseyside with a point. That they lost would have made the away dressing room unbearable.

Carragher said he would not be distraught if the equaliser that swerved past Boro’s stand-in goalkeeper, Ross Turnbull, via Emanuel Pogatetz’s chest was not credited to him. “I’m hardly going to break any goalscoring records, am I?” he smiled. But he understood that Liverpool had carried a great deal of fortune.

“Middlesbrough performed well; it was a great strike from Mido and, to be honest, I couldn’t see us scoring,” he admitted. “But we have done it so many times at Anfield – when all of a sudden something just happens in the last 10 minutes and the Kop sucks a goal in.”

Gerrard’s winner was, Carragher said, almost inevitable, and the way the Middlesbrough manager, Gareth Southgate, ran his hands across his face as the goal went in suggested these were not unique thoughts. “Attacking the Kop like that gives you a belief,” Carragher said. “We have been doing it since the days of Shankly and it is something Liverpool will always continue to do.

“We haven’t clicked yet; there is no hiding from that. If we perform as we have done over the past few weeks, it is going to be extremely difficult to beat Standard Liege [in the Champions League qualifier].

“There is a lot of pressure when you play for Liverpool and I know what the headlines would have been had we lost to Middlesbrough – they would have said the title was over.”