THOSE who perceive a bottle to be half empty when it could just as easily be described as half-full will no doubt still harbour reservations about Liverpool's overall quality.

Anfield is awash with pessimists these days and even if their impatience has become predictable and prone to early manifestation, their sense of caution, it must be said is perfectly understandable.

Yes, Liverpool won this one comfortably enough. But had Aston Villa not been criminally negligent in declining to build something tangible and lasting upon their first-half supremacy, a game of wildly fluctuating fortunes and curious contradictions might have boasted a different complexion.

The final whistle prefaced a standing ovation for the Premiership leaders but one born of relief rather than admiration; only the gullible and the naive will have been fooled.

In his haste to embroider a burgeoning reputation for plain speaking and honesty, Villa manager Brian Little chose to overlook, perhaps deliberately, the fact that his side could but all have wrapped things up long before Liverpool stirred themselves sufficiently to claim the goals in the space of 13 second-half minutes.

Little's erudite assessment of what he labelled a "tired" display may have been manna from heaven for the tabloids, but in deriding his own team's contribution, he made Liverpool appear altogether more effective than they actually were.

"Immediately afterwards a few people said that we had done okay, said that we were in control, but I am not sure I agree with that," he said.

"I thought we were miles behind Liverpool. This is a big blow for us today. If you want to win the championship it is not exactly ideal to find yourselves 10 points behind Liverpool at the end of January," he added, as if to run a white flag up a pole.

Liverpool played well only in those periods when Villa's sense of organisation deserted them, notably at the opening of either half and in the dying moments when they were kicking at an open door. With half his first team either injured, sick or suspended, their conservative manager Roy Evans turned reluctant gambler, drafting in debutants Jamie Carragher and Bjorn Kvarme and reshaping a midfield which was stripped of its central components, John Barnes and Michael Thomas.

Once Villa's Dwight Yorke had spurned three presentable openings, Liverpool struck swiftly and clinically to drain away the intrigue from the afternoon.

After the hugely impressive Carragher had turned in Stig Bjornebye's corner, Stan Collymore rose to dispatch a cross from the same provider.

Mark Bosnich's basic handling error was to present Robbie Fowler with a simple third shortly afterwards, but by that point Villa had long since - abandoned any hope of standing toe-to-toe with more eager opponents.

Of late, there has been much heated debate on Merseyside as to why precisely a wedge the size of a Dalglishesque pay packet should have fallen between, and thus temporarily divided, the players and supporters of Liverpool.

Hired helpers at a society wedding before last May's FA Cup final and the subsequent appearances of several of the prettier members of Evans' lame army tramping up and down catwalks won't have helped sustain the bond between the rich and the impoverished.

But, Saturday hinted at a return to the more robust fundamentals and if the traditional forces can be harnessed, both on the pitch and away from it, the title remains a possibility.