The last time Liverpool beat Manchester United at Old Trafford, English football was still a manageable entity. Kenny Dalglish was a working man then, a mumbling, canny narrow-eyed Scot and brilliant in a poker-faced way.

There he was yesterday morning in the Sky studios, days after his u600,000 pay-off £600,000 sterling pay-off for services rendered to Celtic. Deep down, there is probably a part of Kenny Dalglish that questions the torrents of cash on which the cross-channel game now floats. The Scot was brought up the old way, reared on the now-quaint values of the boot-room, taught to use words sparingly, imbued with a fervent respect for the game, for the tradition which he considerably enhanced as a player.

Privately, Dalglish may well think it ludicrous that his old Glasgow club are off-loading over half a million pounds for a job he never really started, let alone finished. But such are the times.

It would have been nice to see Dalglish in his prime on that field at Old Trafford yesterday. This fixture was billed as perhaps the definitive tie of the year; another loss would almost certainly see the Merseyside giant slip into another season of obscurity and any slipups by Arsenal would see United stand alone and unassailable at Christmas.

Sky television covers occasions like this very well. There is a melodious urgency about Andy Gray's voice that shakes even the most severe Saturday night hangovers and Martin Tyler delivers his commentary in the crisp, urgent, tones of those old Pathe newsreel announcers. Every attack bristles with danger, each Beckham cross is met with edge-of-seat anticipation.

Sky's state-of-the-art camera work captures all notable moments from every conceivable angle and they, are course, also heavy on statistics.

But for all that, the agenda is clear. You never see a bad Premiership match on Sky sports.

The statistics invariably concentrate on the positive; corners won, possession percentages. It would have been interesting to see statistics on the many negative aspects of yesterday's game - shots on goal after 18 minutes (zero), Liverpool passes that went directly over sideline in the same period (at least four), percentage of time ball was not in the air, number of close-up shots of gum-chewing Alex Ferguson, ratio of Michael Owen's weekly salary to poor first touches, average distance between Emile Heskey and the ball after his first controlling touch. It is hard not to imagine a younger, slightly less craggy Dalglish flourishing in the red (or off-yellow, as was the case yesterday) against Manchester United, now the best side in the world, according to Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier.

The most important thing about yesterday's game was that there was still a discernible sense that the occasion mattered in its own right. The result will probably be of little consequence when the season ends next May, and Manchester United will, most likely, never look so blunted at home again.

But in the dying moments of injury time the faces were worth beholding. The cameras lingered on a Scouse kid in a Reebok cap who had his hands over his face. It then switched to Houllier, who was crouched forward and appeared to be whispering what could well have been a desperate prayer.

As Jamie Carragher confirmed afterwards, the whole team was "made up" after winning at Old Trafford. All the more so because nobody outside Liverpool gave them a prayer. The whole thing hinged, of course, in another curious twist in the fates of the brothers Neville. Presumably Gary Neville was trying to chest what was a perfectly harmless long ball in order to execute what would have been a leisurely, unhurried clearance.

Maybe he'd been playing a bit of volleyball over the weekend. Perhaps he was just bored and wanted to see if it was possible to chest a football while clasping his hands together. It is an issue that Ferguson is probably following up in great detail at the training ground this morning. In any case, Neville's bizarre blunder left Liverpool with a free-kick which Danny Murphy, who had been misfiring passes with abandon, struck with astonishing precision.

The shot was worthy of several hundred Sky replays before a wholehearted round of praise, with Dalglish asked to provide the colour. "It's, eh, it's a great free-kick," he ventured.

Ferguson's decision to throw in Jonathan Greening suggested that he figured the occasion would be rescued without undue difficulty, as the incessant United pressure suggested.

The introduction of Luke Chadwick, however, was somehow troublesome, possibly because the youngster shares his name with a former Scouse soap character.

"Because here's Keane . . . oh, and it's Chadwick" did not really have the old, chilling descriptive cut we have come to associate with sweeping Manchester United attacking moves. And there was something almost poignant about the sight of young Luke grabbing onto Vladimir Smicer's arm as the Liverpool substitute careered downfield. In such moments do delicate careers go up in smoke, or at least straight down the M1 to somewhere like Grimsby.

That Gary McAllister, still sprightly at 52 years, would come in to blast the resultant free into the proverbial onion bag was too much for Liverpool fans to hope for but, well, he came close. It was that sort of afternoon.

The exultant Liverpool crowd could be clearly heard at the close of the game, suggesting there was truth in Roy Keane's cut at the Old Trafford prawn sandwich crowd. But even United fans will concede that yesterday's improbable win breathed a little new life into the Premiership drama.

For a week or two at least.