As the red shirts raised their arms at the final whistle, Jordan Henderson got on with hugging everyone he could find. Henderson hugged Davinson Sánchez and Lucas Moura. He hugged Jürgen Klopp, folding himself into that nylon‑suited embrace while Klopp beamed over his shoulder like a proud father.

From there Henderson applauded every stand so enthusiastically he seemed, briefly, to consider moving on to the Tottenham end, or perhaps the TV camera crew paddling in his wake like a pair of faithful R2 units.

It was that kind of occasion. This was a game Henderson clutched to his chest from the first minute, the time of Tottenham’s opening goal, and didn’t let go until it had been shaped to his will, doused in his scent, and generally arm-wrestled Liverpool’s way.

A 2-1 win means the leaders have now equalled the best 10-game start to a Premier League season. They did so in a way that sprang, in large part, from the captain’s pure, unrelenting will, a way of running, of hurling himself at the day that simply draws the rest of this team in his wake.

It has been said Alex Ferguson passed on taking Henderson to Manchester United because he believed he “ran from his knees”. This may or may not be the case. Nobody really knows for sure. Not least because Henderson – sorry, Sir Alex – isn’t actually a horse.

Either way Liverpool’s skipper certainly runs a lot. He ran from his knees all the way to Madrid last year. He ran Liverpool back into this wild, one-sided, entirely gripping game that seemed at one stage doomed to become a ghostly Halloween reprise of that buried trauma of five years ago: Chelsea, José, endless deep defence, Demba Ba and all that.

Brendan Rodgers still thinks Liverpool might have won the Premier League title if they hadn’t lost Henderson for that game. It would have seemed like straw-clutching back then. Not so now. This was in some ways a real-time rerun, a game that carried many of the same rhythms, but with Henderson very much present and centre stage.

This was a thrillingly heated, dizzyingly one-sided game from the moment Tottenham took that early lead, Harry Kane heading in cutely as the ball rebounded back off the bar. At times it was as though the ghost of Mourinho was out there stalking across the Anfield turf as Spurs lingered over throw-ins and stood around free-kicks breaking the play, and generally drove the Anfield crowd to distraction.

It took Liverpool 56 frantic minutes to equalise. In that time they had nine shots on target to Tottenham’s one, 351 accurate passes to Spurs’ 80, 76% possession, five corners to zero corners. At the end of which the goal came from the player in that front six who is, on the face of it, among the least likely to score; but who seemed, nonetheless, an oddly inevitable presence.

Henderson is some way short of a great footballer, or even at times a very good one. His touch can seem clunky, his passing blunt, his inability to take the ball on the half-turn, legend among long-term England watchers. But he is all the same a great Liverpool footballer, a player who on occasions like these seems to communicate something vital not just to his teammates but to the crowd.

The goal was made by a lovely looped, faded diagonal pass from Fabinho. And also by some limp defending from Danny Rose, who watched, leapt weakly, then fell over as the ball drifted over his head. Henderson had come sprinting in from the right behind Rose, reading the flight perfectly and clipping the ball without breaking stride back across Paulo Gazzaniga. As the ball hit the net he just kept on running, past the corner flag and back to his teammates.

Tottenham had sat deep for so long that from there the pattern of the game seemed set. Even the winning goal was the product of another piece of dreadful full-back play. This time it was from Serge Aurier, given another chance here to continue the hugely gripping, real-time art installation that is Serge Aurier Plays Right Back.

As Liverpool pressed hard Aurier seemed to have muscled Sadio Mané away from the ball inside the area. He switched off. Mané nipped in and took the ball. Aurier, not really seeming to look, kicked him in the back of the leg. Penalty. Mo Salah tucked away the kick.

There was no way back from there. These Liverpool players have a collective presence now, a kind of energy that comes just from seeing them together. They were led on this occasion by Henderson, the man who wasn’t there five years ago, an absence that went largely unremarked in the froth over Mourinho’s play‑acting and spoiling tactics; but who offered up his own moment of correction here.