Reds’ admirable passion can’t match experience of Blues’ ice-cold assassins

The passion in the stands carried echoes from the past, the flags were definitely not plastic and the noise both from the Kop and the crowds that ushered the team bus into Anfield sent shivers down the spine of anyone with a love of football nostalgia. But in the end, Liverpool found experience counted for more than history — and that must hurt.

Chelsea, despite a decade of success, are still described on Merseyside as a club lacking the depth of football history that makes Liverpool a worldwide phenomenon — a proud and colourful past which saw neutrals all around the globe transfixed as You’ll Never Walk Alone shook Anfield’s rafters before kick-off.

Now, however, the nerves are jangling following a remarkable performance by Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea that underlined why the team from west London can never be ruled out of any match — or any title race — no matter who they face. Liverpool went into the game with momentum and probably the best wishes of the vast majority of football fans living outside of Manchester; but Chelsea proved there is far more to winning a title than beautiful football, a flood of goals and an electric atmosphere.

Mourinho’s side have vast experience of winning trophies, of playing together in difficult moments, of winning big matches year after year; they have experience in terms of personnel on the pitch and, just as importantly, experience in the dugout. And yesterday it showed.

If there is anyone out there who still thinks managers and tactics play only a small part in Premier League football — and that games are decided entirely by players on the pitch — then this result will probably put them right because Mourinho’s influence on the victory was immense.

Coming up against one of his proteges, having promoted Brendan Rodgers from youth team to reserve team manager in his previous spell at Chelsea, the Special One reminded the apprentice just how much he still has to learn as he planned and plotted a perfect away performance — just as he had done against Manchester City earlier in the campaign.

It began with the dark arts of pre-match psychology, complaining about the scheduling of the fixture and threatening to field a weakened side, but continued with a disciplined and well thought-out game plan that frustrated Liverpool for 90 minutes and left them a broken team by the time Willian tapped in a second goal right at the death.

Filling his midfield with the strength and experience of Lampard, Matic and Mikel, Mourinho opted for the power of Ba up front, surrounded by the pace of Schurrle and Salah, and often kept as many as eight players in his own half as Liverpool were frustrated time and again.

You could say it wasn’t pretty, you could call it anti-football — especially when Chelsea began wasting time and running the ball into the corner after only 16 minutes — but it was all designed to get under Liverpool’s skin; and it worked.

The way Steven Gerrard gifted Ba an opening goal after 45 minutes was fortunate, perhaps, but there was virtually nothing else about Chelsea’s performance that was accidental or unaccounted for; this was a display that was planned and calculated from first minute to last.

The result leaves Chelsea, who take on Atletico Madrid in the Champions League semi-final on Wednesday, still in contention for the title — especially when you consider their final two games are at home to Norwich and away to Cardiff, who will almost certainly be relegated by then, while Liverpool must settle their nerves at Crystal Palace, then beat Newcastle on the final day.

Manchester City, meanwhile, will take over the mantle of favourites if they can do the hard part and beat Everton away before home games against ailing Aston Villa and West Ham. But no-one now can rule out Chelsea with any certainty — either in the Premier League or in Europe — as the season draws to a close.

Whatever you think of their tactics, their history, their demeanour, their manager, this is a Chelsea team that knows how to win major trophies; and that carries an intrinsic value way beyond the collective talents of those who pull on a blue shirt.

Liverpool meanwhile, for all the nostalgia and spine-tingling rhetoric, are still waiting to gain that experience — which makes the last two games of a remarkable title race so hard to predict. Of course the first title of a new era is always the hardest to win — just ask Manchester United who waited 26 years and Chelsea who waited 50. But that will be of no comfort to nervous fans on the Kop as they ponder a trip to Selhurst Park a week today.