It took the form of a young goalkeeper called Tomasz Kuszczak, who stopped everything thrown at him by the Merseysiders except the second-half header by Peter Crouch, his sixth goal in seven games, that extended their winning run to 10 matches.
Kuszczak, 23, is keeping Chris Kirkland, one of England's most promising goalkeepers, out the West Brom team at the moment. Kirkland could not have played yesterday anyway, since he is on loan from Liverpool. But he could have a long wait on the bench if the free-transfer signing from Hertha Berlin continues in this kind of awesome form.
West Brom came to Anfield with everything stacked against them. It was not just a question of not having beaten Liverpool in the Premiership before: they had not won a League game against the Merseysiders for nearly 25 years.
And it was even longer than that - 37 years - since the Albion had gone away from Anfield with a victory to their names.
Nor did the more recent statistics offer the visitors much hope. On Boxing Day, 2004, Liverpool went to The Hawthorns and thrashed them 5-0.
Those goals were some of the 16 Liverpool had put past West Brom in the Premiership, without reply, before yesterday's encounter. So the prospects for them were bleak, especially without some of their key players.
It was said that Nwankwo Kanu, two-goal hero of West Brom's victory over Tottenham last Wednesday, was absent because of thigh and knee injuries; but there was a suspicion that manager Bryan Robson might be just making sure the Nigeria international was fully fit for tomorrow's local derby against Aston Villa.
Robson certainly made no bones about resting Jonathan Greening, Diomansy Kamara and Nathan Ellington, all of whom had played against Spurs.
Liverpool, too, did some of the rotating necessitated by playing four games in eight days over the holiday period. John Arne Riise came in for Stephen Warnock at left-back and Luis Garcia replaced Mohamed Sissoko in midfield.
Robson's answer to the problem of climbing this mountain of unfavourable facts and figures was to use a 3-5-2 formation, in which the experienced Steve Watson played between Curtis Davies and Neil Clement at the back. What it really amounted to was an exercise in damage limitation, although Steven Gerrard did have to block-tackle Darren Carter to stop West Brom pinching an early goal on the break.
From then on, it was backs to the wall for Albion as Liverpool swarmed around their goal. Shots rained down on Kuszczak from every angle.
The first, a 30-yarder by Harry Kewell, he managed to shovel over the bar. Then he beat away another shot from the Australian.
Kuszczak was powerless to stop a low shot by Riise that followed a corner on the left in the 21st minute, but the ball came back off a post and the goalkeeper then blocked Kewell's fierce follow-up. Finally, after Richard Chaplow had made a complete hash of a half-chance at the other end, Kuszczak denied Gerrard with another brave block.
The young Pole's satisfaction at keeping a clean sheet up to the interval did not last long after it. Six minutes into the second half, Crouch finally managed to get the better of the obdurate West Brom defence and succeeded in nodding Kewell's perfectly-flighted centre into the bottom corner.
The Kop were so impressed by Kewell's contribution to the breakthrough that they began to chant his name. Given that those same hard-core fans had booed the Australia international off the field when injury forced him out of the Champions League final in Istanbul, this could be taken as a major sign of forgiveness.
But if the Kopites thought Crouch's goal was an opening of the floodgates, they were mistaken. A shot by Gerrard looped off Davies on to the roof of the net and Kuszczak made yet another breathtaking save, getting down low to keep out a Riise piledriver.
In the last 17 minutes the Albion goalkeeper made three more saves, from Crouch, substitute Florent Sinima-Pongolle and Gerrard, that ranged from the routine to the exceptional. Robson tried to salvage something by sending on Greening, Kamara and Ellington in the closing stages, but it was too late by then.