Option or protection: that is the mantra that Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has laid down to his mercury-like midfielders whose fluid, ever-changing ebbs and flows utterly flummoxed Hull City and further elevated his team’s status as title contenders.

It is not only the high-intensity counter-pressing that opponents have found so difficult to cope with when facing Klopp’s side. Pinning down anyone from that quicksilver midfield, to which the tenacity of two excellent full backs is often added, has proved a nearly impossible task.

Match highlights: Liverpool 5 Hull City 1

“They were ruthless,” Curtis Davies, Hull’s shell-shocked captain, said. “They go wherever they want and that is what causes all the problems. The inter-changing, the good football, the passing . . . it is hard to lay a glove on anyone.