Man Utd 2-2 Liverpool: Salah saves point, Mainoo & Bruno net, Gunners still top

When the final whistle went, Jarell Quansah, who had been one of the best players on the pitch and is one of the best young players in the country, put his head in his hands and then pulled his shirt as high over his face as he could make it go.

Bruno Fernandes, the Manchester United captain, noticed his demeanour and gave him a consoling pat on the back. Virgil van Dijk did the same. Liverpool had just blinked first in the title race and Quansah felt it was his fault. Football can be a brutal game like that.

It is true that Liverpool were coasting when Quansah made a mistake four minutes after half time and if fingers are to be pointed for their dropped points at Old Trafford, they could be pointed at those who missed a series of chances against Manchester United as much as they could be pointed at Quansah.

But his mistake was notable, partly because of how brilliantly Fernandes took advantage of it and partly because it carried some echoes of The Slip, the startling moment when a mistake by Steven Gerrard led to a Chelsea goal at Anfield that was a seminal moment in Liverpool’s doomed title challenge in 2014.

Liverpool were 1-0 up when Quansah got the ball inside his own half and played a pass towards Van Dijk. Except he had not seen Fernandes lurking. Fernandes read the pass and ran on to it and, in a flash, he had spotted Caomhin Kelleher off his line and chipped the ball over him from more than 40 yards out.

The goal changed the game. It brought United a measure of deliverance from a game in which they were being outclassed and brought them to within nine minutes of normal time of snatching a famous win after a magnificent second from Kobbie Mainoo.

But there is a twist here, too. Quansah did not fold. He did not crumble.