Bottle. A noun if you have it, a verb if you suddenly, emphatically do not. On Sunday, Anfield hosted English football’s unofficial, but long-established, Bottle Derby.

In the red corner: Liverpool, a club who have spent the last 29 years like an undeterred fly at a window, buzzing and bouncing at a reasonably safe distance from the league title, their last attempt having been swatted away by 2014’s schadenfreudian slip of Steven Gerrard.

Standing in the way of three highly-desired points were Tottenham, once the paradigm of a rather more slow-burning form of perceived bottling, and now engaged full-time in a gruelling, sweaty, muscular wrestle with their own reputation.

With all that bottle-based baggage, perhaps it was no surprise that the matter was settled with a 90th-minute own goal; Hugo Lloris’s brain conspiring with Toby Alderweireld’s shin to produce a snapshot of starkly contrasting fortune that had observers talking of moments and margins.

5 minutes and 11 seconds earlier, it could all have been so different.