This was their seventh home win in the Premiership this season and while Manchester United and Chelsea are out of sight, the ruler of Dubai, reputedly the fifth richest man on the planet, can contemplate taking over England's most successful club with the enticing prospect that their near impregnable citadel should guarantee them Champions' League football next season.
Yesterday, they overcame a lacklustre first-half performance to dismantle Fulham, who have never won a competitive game at Anfield. Steven Gerrard broke their resistance, Luis Garcia and Mark Gonzalez got the third and fourth, but in between was a collector's item of a goal that would have tempted even the Sheikh's accountants to transfer their attention from the cash to the football records.
Jamie Carragher may be a thoroughbred defender but he scores with a lot less regularity than the Sheikh's racehorses and you had to go back to January 1999 and the 7-1 rout of Southampton since the last time he found the net in the Premiership. Yesterday, he slid the ball in after 61 minutes to send his goal record soaring to four in 441 appearances. A shaker, as they do not say in Dubai.
"He is a clever player at corners," said Benitez. "Usually he goes to the near post but we asked him to change his runs and he gets a goal." And to underline the novelty, he added. "It's his first goal of the century."
Whereas Liverpool had dismantled Wigan last week with the vibrancy of their first-half performance, this time they waited until after the interval and for the first 45 minutes they risked putting off any potential investors with the poverty of their passing and imagination. Fulham have a record at Anfield that would make battle-hardened soldiers shudder, yet they used Papa Bouba Diop and Michael Brown to hustle Gerrard and Xabi Alonso into near anonymity and they might even have taken the lead when Brian McBride twisted to hit Moritz Volz's cross on the half-volley after seven minutes, a shot that was tipped round the post by Jose Reina.
Luis Garcia had a near-post flick cleared off the line by Liam Rosenior and the Spaniard also headed just over in the 44th minute, but it was a laboured Liverpool at odds with the dynamism they showed at the JJB Stadium. "We knew the game would be difficult," Benitez said. "I told the players at half-time to keep going, to keep attacking. We had so much possession, a goal was likely to come."
Even so, Anfield was becoming disgruntled and if Fulham could have survived the first 20 minutes after the interval they might have weathered the squall. Instead, they lost Diop to injury after 49 minutes and with the midfield security blanket gone, the anxiety grew in their defence. And when they did succumb, they collapsed spectacularly.
The breach was made after 54 minutes when Craig Bellamy crossed from the left and Dirk Kuyt turned and hit a thunderous shot. Ian Pearce bravely hurled himself in the way, was adjudged to have used his hands, and, to compound Fulham's grief, Jan Lastuvka's excellent save from Gerrard bounced straight to the Liverpool captain.
A study of matches at Anfield this season would reveal that one Liverpool goal is usually followed quickly by another and this match was no exception. All very straightforward, all very predictable, except for the identity of the scorer, Carragher, who slid the ball in at the far post after Daniel Agger had flicked on.
When Carragher gets a goal against you, there are reasons to fear and Fulham spent much of the rest of the match as if they were reeling with disbelief. Luis Garcia made it 3-0 when he headed into the top corner from Agger's 66th-minute cross and it seemed an act of mercy when the fourth official showed stoppage time. Sadly for the visitors, Gonzalez made it eight goals for Liverpool in two Premiership matches by curling a 25-yard free-kick into the bottom corner. "When we go 1-0 down we have to show more togetherness rather than feeling sorry for ourselves," Chris Coleman, the Fulham manager, said. By the final whistle, they were looking very sorry.