The memories sparked by the draw against Juventus in last season's European Cup quarter-final did not extend to this fixture, partly because they are playing in a different stadium and partly because having not shied away as a city and a club from responsibility for the disaster, there is a feeling that it is time to move on and look forward.
Should Liverpool return to Merseyside in the small hours of tomorrow morning having overcome Anderlecht, they will be on the verge of qualification from what appeared one of the toughest groups in this season's Champions League.
Anderlecht are certainly beatable. From the moment the draw was made, they seemed obvious fall-guys and nothing that has happened since would disprove that. They have now lost their last nine group games and their coach, Frank Vercauteren, said it was possible they would go through a second successive Champions League campaign without picking up a point.
Conducting his press conference in three languages, Vercauteren, who studied Rafael Benitez's techniques at Valencia while applying for his Uefa licence, called tonight's encounter "un match hyper-difficile".
And yet there are more questions for Liverpool to answer than merely who wins. The crucial question may be: who scores? So far the two strikers Benitez brought to Anfield at a cost of £13 million, Peter Crouch and Fernando Morientes, have failed to find the net in either the Premiership or the Champions League proper. Crouch's problems have been much debated on Merseyside but last Saturday, against Blackburn, Morientes replaced the Englishman, was presented with three simple chances, and missed the lot.
This was Morientes' first game after injuring a hamstring after the Super Cup win over CSKA Moscow in August and, dismissing reports he wanted to return to Spain, Benitez said he only needed match fitness and greater awareness of how he played. "He is determined for sure to prove himself in England," he said.
"I don't know why people keep talking of us wanting Joaquin - we have never talked about him and we have certainly never talked about Cisse or Morientes going the other way. I could read the reports in the Spanish press and I talked to Fernando and said: 'Forget about all that'.
"I knew he wants to make a success of it over here - that is clear. They have been talking about him going back to Spain and I know he has friends who read the papers and talk to him about them, so I needed to speak with him."
Benitez is adamant that once Harry Kewell, who travelled to Belgium with the Liverpool squad, returns to full fitness, the crosses that Morientes and Crouch feed off will begin to come. However, the sight of Crouch isolated and unsupported up front, as he too often was in the 4-1 defeat by Chelsea, is not one Benitez wants to see repeated.
"The players around Crouch need to know how to play with him. When you see the statistics, he wins a lot of balls in every game but we need to be around him in support."
If Crouch and Morientes have given Benitez some anxious moments so, too, has Xabi Alonso, the rock around which Liverpool's European Cup triumph was secured. "People forget that Xabi was at such a high level last season," Benitez said.
"It is more difficult because people are marking him more tightly and putting pressure on him. But that means if players around him play well we can benefit. It's the same with Crouch. Xabi has the ability to play well even when he is tightly marked, and especially when he has Steven Gerrard alongside him."