During the Premier League’s flush of European dominance a decade ago Real Madrid’s sporting director, Jorge Valdano, famously described matches such as these – tight, angry heavyweight English collisions – as the equivalent of a stadium full of people watching “a shit on a stick”. On a bleak January afternoon the current incarnations of Liverpool and Manchester United produced their own variation on Valdano’s theme for the first 78 minutes of this match. This was shit on a stick football, just without the stick. Or without the football much of the time.

And yet by the end all that really mattered was the result. For United there is no such thing as a bad win at Liverpool. Just as for Wayne Rooney there is no day when a performance that ends with a winning goal spanked with gleeful fury into the roof of the Anfield Road end net can be described as a poor one.

The goal itself was a glorious little moment of unexpected narrative redemption towards the end of a constipated, rambling match during which for the first hour United once again performed with all the unbound attacking vim of a quietly expiring diplodocus. Juan Mata, who has been poor recently, took the ball from Daley Blind on the left and produced a whipped cross. Marouane Fellaini, who was otherwise genuinely horrible here in all sorts of ways – a giant, barging human wardrobe, and yet so easily overpowered; so vast but somehow always playing at full stretch – clanked a header against the crossbar. Rooney steadied himself and smashed the rebound into the top of the net.

United’s captain has also often been an inviting human piñata for the disaffected at United. But as he spun away to celebrate it was hard to avoid the welcome sense of a grown-up having appeared, finally, in the middle of so much effortful confusion. Afterwards Rooney was asked what it meant to have passed Thierry Henry’s record of 175 league goals for a single club in the Premier League era. He looked nonplussed even when the question had been repeated and explained. “Scoring a winning goal at Anfield,” was the eventual reply. “I’ll be a bit selfish and enjoy that one.”

Rooney is often portrayed unfairly as an unreflective figure, the Premier League’s own standard-bearing meathead and all round goal-Shrek. He is, of course, nothing of the sort, a footballer who for all his struggles has made a real attempt to absorb and discuss and learn from the rigid, tactically intricate template of Louis van Gaal. If Rooney refused to make any greater claims for a victory that leaves United in fifth place, seven points behind the leaders, this is in part because he knows more than anyone this was another muddled occasion, a victory born out of spirit, excellent goalkeeping and a single moment of incision.

United’s captain has spent much of the season chugging about like a man trying to make a hill-start in third gear, but there are signs, with more mobility around him in attack, of a return to assertive form. Rooney has now scored in four straight games for the first time since 2012, a run that is in its own way a masterpiece of minimalism given he has had just 10 shots on target in his last 14 matches. It is the most Van Gaal-ish of scoring sprees, a burst of colour painted on a single grain of rice.

At Anfield Rooney made 12 successful passes in 90 minutes. He blocked, intercepted and cleared his lines. He may never be the player without limits, the explosively high-spec forward of his youth when often he seemed to have come barrelling on to the pitch in a borrowed shirt, some passing teenage genius-for-hire intent on spanking one into the top corner and vaulting the advert boards before being hauled down by the stewards. But here he was, a contained, controlled, presence able to take that one chance with supreme certainty.

He remains a genuine asset in his late-maturity. Not just for Van Gaal but Roy Hodgson, who will be heartened by signs of a sustained return to form for a player who will be hoping to score at his third Euros. Who knows, in a more settled team, with more support from younger, bolder team-mates Rooney might even be treasured a little, the dregs of his brilliance savoured rather than jeered on their way, a player whose crime is to have been simply very good rather than among the very best; and to have struggled in the last two years of a high mileage 14-year career.

Beyond which, this was a match that will offer some comfort to Liverpool, who ran a lot and shot a lot but were still reduced to fielding a three-man attack of James Milner, Adam Lallana and Roberto Firmino. Firmino played well. But the MFL – not perhaps a trio for the ages – still ended this match with eight goals in 83 appearances combined this season. In added time a baffled-looking Steven Caulker got his second game in four days at centre-forward for the five-times European champions. In football, as in everything else, it can be hard to adjust, not just to lowered expectations, but to realistic ones.

Liverpool are outside the main peleton in the race for fourth place now. For Van Gaal’s United, indeterminate 1-0 wins will not come much sweeter than this.