Richard Buxton: Liverpool on the verge of invincibility

Bill Shankly once had a Napoleonic vision for Liverpool to "conquer the bloody world".

They would become a bastion of invincibility; untouchable to the point that everyone else would have to submit and give in. Half a century on, his ambition has finally come to fruition.

A 2-0 win over Manchester United yesterday morning (Singapore time) did not merely reaffirm that Juergen Klopp's side are going to sew up this season's English Premier League title, but that they will do so in the most emphatic fashion by shattering all previous records.

Ending a three-decade wait for domestic league success would always require a monumental effort, but not even the most starry-eyed Kopite could have imagined it becoming this remarkable.

United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer still refuses to acknowledge that his boyhood club are destined for greatness.

There can, however, no longer be any dispute.

If they maintain their current trajectory, the Reds will be eclipsing Manchester City's Centurions, Arsenal's Invincibles and, to a lesser extent, United's Treble winners.

At the same juncture of the season, the Reds are 23 points better off than Sir Alex Ferguson's class of 1999.

Solskjaer's lament of the European champions' directness carried foundation, but was also laced with cultural amnesia.

United were not unequivocally spellbinding when they swept all before them.

Ferguson's serial trophy collectors leaned heavily on grit and gumption too.

His claim about long balls was borne out by Liverpool being the sixth-highest purveyors of it in the EPL this term.

Yet, that in itself underlines the strength of Klopp's unassailable charges.

As United relentlessly pressed during the final stages, their hosts stripped them back to basics.

Route-one counter-attacks may not be the most aesthetically pleasing for fans brought up on tales of swaggering dominance, but even Liverpool's greatest sides had to dig in occasionally.

No one inside Anfield was disputing the manner of Mohamed Salah's settling late strike.

A sweeping left-footed finish from the Egyptian finally awoke the Kraken.

For the first time this season, The Kop gleefully chanted about how their team were "going to win the league".

And now you are just going to believe them.

TEN WINS

Just 10 wins stand between Liverpool and the title.

They could quite literally dethrone the reigning champions when the sides face off on April 4.

Turning the Etihad Stadium into a coronation street will add another layer of gloss to this memorable triumph.

Not that Klopp and his players are looking that far ahead just yet.

Where glorious history once burdened the Club World Cup holders, it is now providing a solid grounding.

Times may have changed from the days when members of the Boot Room unceremoniously handed out championship medals on the first day of pre-season, but the emphasis on focusing only on what lies immediately ahead has been preserved by their modern-day successors.

That willingness to embrace aspects of their past, rather than be defined by it, highlights the growing disparity between Liverpool and their floundering counterparts at Old Trafford.

United's failure to lure Klopp in 2014 was predicated on the ham-fisted analogy of being "like an adult version of Disneyland" - a place where a person's wildest dreams could come true.

Right now, Anfield truly is "the happiest place on earth".