It was José Mourinho who branded Arsène Wenger a "specialist in failure" but Brendan Rodgers' actions could give those words more clout. Despite not benefitting from the "financial doping" that Wenger says falsifies the Premier League title race, Rodgers, in only his second full season at Anfield, has guided Liverpool into a position to do what Wenger has been trying and failing to achieve for the past 10 years: win the league with a swagger.

The purpose of the comparison with Wenger is not to aim a gratuitous kick at the Frenchman but rather to acclaim a manager who has an equally strong commitment to playing attractive football but has applied it with greater intelligence.

Liverpool may ultimately fall short of top spot this season and could even finish below Arsenal but the progress made by the club in the past year bears testament to the methods of a manager with whom the Merseyside club can look forward to an exciting future.

The rise of Liverpool from seventh place last season to title challengers at the sharp end of this one is often presented as a triumph of Rodgers' master plan. That is not quite right. Yes, the 41-year-old has a philosophy but things have not panned out precisely as he foresaw and perhaps the most admirable aspect of his work in the past year has been the extent to which he has adapted to circumstances, opponents and his own mistakes, all while retaining a clear identity.

Where Arsenal are constrained by Wenger's dogmatism, Liverpool have prospered from Rodgers' flexibility.

The former Swansea City manager was quick to realise that "the right way" is the wrong way if it does not work. And he has then found the right way – or rather the right ways, since one of the hallmarks of Liverpool this season has been the frequency with which they have changed formations or personnel from game to game or within games, using slightly different means to reach the same end.

The most obvious quality that Rodgers has added to Liverpool this season is penetration. This season they have scored 25 more goals than they had done at the same stage last term, despite averaging 3% less possession per match: they have attacked with greater speed, unhinging defences with devastating movement and technique; players' imagination flourishing in space wrought by the manager's design. Opponents never quite know what shape Liverpool will start with.

He introduced a three-man defence to get Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge firing together when the Uruguayan returned from the ban that ruled him out of the first five matches, and since then Liverpool have also lined up in 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2.

At Southampton at the start of this month Liverpool began with a diamond in midfield for the first time this season and took an early lead. Southampton then threatened to equalise so Rodgers switched to 4-3-3 and regained the initiative, Liverpool running out 3-0 winners. He then redeployed the diamond at Old Trafford and cruised to another 3-0 win.

In January Liverpool were trailing 2-0 at home to Aston Villa before Rodgers sacrificed his playmaker, Philippe Coutinho, and brought on Lucas Leiva to lay the platform for a fightback to 2-2. "For me the system is irrelevant," Rodgers said after that. "But the style will always be maintained, to control and dominate games."

Rodgers is derided for spouting David Brent-style soundbites but in fact his utterances are another manifestation of his efficiency. He condenses his thought to easily digested units. His tinkering is born of the same efficiency. He is not a self-regarding manager who changes for the sake of it. Liverpool, indeed, have made fewer substitutions (71) than any other team in the league this season.

Rodgers's mid-game changes tend to work but, with a limited squad that was not reinforced in January, he makes them only when necessary – and that is not very often because his original game plan is usually the right one, as shown by Liverpool's superb first-half record, the best in the league.

Further evidence of the clarity of Rodgers's vision and communication is the extent to which individual players have improved under him to better serve the collective. His coaching works. Sturridge and Jordan Henderson have consistently shown the potential that only flickered under others.

So few people, meanwhile, saw the potential in Jon Flanagan that what distinguished him in the Liverpool reserves was that no lower league clubs sought him on loan, yet the 21-year-old has filled in at left-back with gusto in recent months. Flanagan has won the same number of tackles as Southampton's new England international left-back Luke Shaw has this season, despite playing in only half as many matches.

The list of player improvements goes on – and it has been needed because, although they have been spared a European expedition this season, Liverpool have still had to work around the absences of key players, with Suárez banned for the first five league matches, Sturridge and Coutinho enduring significant injury lay-offs and full-backs falling like dominoes.

Rodgers has had to improvise and ensure his players do so as well. They have usually obliged. Raheem Sterling has evolved from a rapid and tricky winger into a rapid and tricky winger with the poise and precision to function also as a bona fide playmaker, diminishing the dependency on Coutinho.

Joe Allen has redefined his game to re-emerge from the sidelines in recent weeks – the midfielder, a decaffeinated additive last term, has given the side real pep by nearly doubling the number of tackles he makes per match (from 2.53 to 4.42) this season to overtake the figures of Liverpool's most prolific tackler last season (Lucas, 4.33), thereby softening the impact of the loss of Lucas to injury.

And it is not only young players whom Rodgers has nurtured: Martin Skrtel seemed destined for the Anfield exit but has become the club's most dependable centre-back, which is just as well as the £16m signing Mamadou Sakho has been out injured for long periods. And, of course, Steven Gerrard has performed his new deep-lying midfield role with a considered effectiveness that is unlikely to have come to him naturally.

Not everything is rosy in the garden. The defence retains a brittleness that suggests there is only so much improvement even a top coach such as Rodgers can wring from some players and further investment in the summer will be required.

And Rodgers's investment record is not spotless, as Iago Aspas and Luis Alberto, for instance, have yet to justify the millions spent on them, although giving up on them now would be premature.

For Rodgers has restored hope to Liverpool through skill, imagination and realism.