There are days in every successful title chase when the stars align, the decisions fall favourably and the opposition just cannot finish from either 20 yards or six. You might argue that Liverpool had all these factors on their side this time, but they would have exchanged none of them for the finishing of Mohamed Salah. The Premier League’s top goalscorer scored twice in what long promised to be a defining match in the season – at a stadium where both Arsenal and Manchester City have lost. Yet it was the manner of Salah’s second that eclipsed everything that had prefaced it this afternoon – the complaints of the Bournemouth support, and the fine margins of the goal chances that passed by the home team. Salah dispatched it in the manner of the greats, with an assuredness that had eluded every other player on the pitch.

Bournemouth, on a 12-match unbeaten run, with nine goals in their previous two wins alone, often had the measure of Liverpool. They are a fine side, although Liverpool are good at beating fine sides. Antoine Semenyo shivered the Liverpool post in the first half, and Marcus Tavernier did the same after the break. Justin Kluivert missed the subsequent rebound from six yards. David Brookes had a headed goal ruled out for a marginal offside in the build-up.

So it was on 75 minutes, with Liverpool leading by the contested penalty he had scored in the first half, that Salah showed all concerned how it was done. He is that kind of footballer – a man for the big moments. Drifting into the game, drifting out the game, but always there for the final pass at the end of the most promising attacks. It is to him that his team-mates gravitate. In the preceding seconds the substitute Curtis Jones briefly considered a shot but, over his right shoulder, the big man of the team was coming into view.

From Jones’ pass, Salah’s left-foot finish from the right – a perfect arc struck at the end of a counter-attack – finally secured the result. It could have gone many different ways, given the strength of the Bournemouth performance, but this season it always seems to be Salah’s way. Liverpool ended the game with a nine-point lead over Arsenal in second place. The missing game – that postponed Merseyside derby – is a week on Wednesday. They play away at Manchester City in three weeks’ time. Fifteen games to go – their rivals are running out of chances to stop them.

A title-race defining game? “Almost every game feels like that to me,” said Liverpool manager Arne Slot. “So many of our games have been exciting to the end and there were a few moments this season when I felt we are just not on the right side [of decisions]. All the points we have had until now, I think we deserved them. Maybe the Chelsea game, that’s under debate, and [now] this game. We weren’t unlucky, put it that way. But Fulham, Manchester United [games] – we had chances to win. Forest, that ended in a draw. What I want from the players is they fight to the last second – that is what the fans expect.”.

Another big performance from Alisson Becker, who was crucial in Bournemouth’s strong early start, and there were times when there was nothing much any of Liverpool defenders could do. Most notably, five minutes before Salah’s second, when Tavernier’s shot came off the inside of the post at a sharp angle to Kluivert and the winger could not steer it on target. Anywhere in the goal would have done for Bournemouth.

“We hit the post, there was the second ball [for Kluivert], the goal disallowed – we needed to punish them because we knew we would concede chances,” said Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola, who was not prepared to linger on any sense of injustice over the penalty. He just said that he wished his team had been given a similar one against Brentford earlier in the season. The referee, Darren England, had penalised Lewis Cook for a trip on Cody Gakpo. The Bournemouth captain did not offer much argument and VAR passed it, although there was plenty of dissent from the stands. “Who’s the Scouser in the blue?” the home fans sang – not an assumption that was being made by the conspiracy theorists in October 2023.

Then it had been England who, as the VAR for Liverpool’s visit to Tottenham Hotspur, wrongly noted the on-field decision for a Luis Díaz goal and ensured it was disallowed rather than given – as he had intended it to be. That plunged PGMOL into one of its intermittent VAR crises and ensured that England would not be at Anfield, or indeed in charge of a Liverpool game, for the rest of the season. This was his first as an on-field referee for a game involving Liverpool since then.