It started as a fairytale afternoon for Liverpool’s new darling, slowly turned into a nightmare for the referee as Chelsea fought back and ended, amid plenty of mud-slinging afterwards, with Rafael BenÍtez talking about Little Red Riding Hood. If this is a sign of things to come in the Barclays Premier League title race, it promises to be a season full of twists, turns and a taste of the bizarre.

Frank Lampard’s second-half penalty earned Chelsea a draw that they will treasure after falling behind to an early goal from Fernando Torres, on his Anfield debut, but that does not begin to describe the events of a quite breathless afternoon.

Throw in the hugely controversial nature of that penalty, nine bookings – or ten if you include the rogue second yellow card that Rob Styles, the referee, brandished to Michael Essien during a tense second period – some spiky postmatch comments and, lest it gets overlooked, some good football from both teams, and you start to get the picture.

Little Red Riding Hood? That cropped up in the postmatch press conference when BenÍtez, the Liverpool manager, was informed that José Mourinho had responded to Steven Gerrard’s criticism of Chelsea by painting a picture of an angelic, or at least “naive”, team. BenÍtez smirked. “Then I am Little Red Riding Hood,” he said. “Look at their team and ask yourself how many times their players do the things they say they don’t do. Their players talk to the referee all the time.”

And they do, as Sir Alex Ferguson, among others, has observed in the past. Mourinho expressed outrage at such accusations in the postmatch press conference, but, if ever – perish the thought – a team was to harangue a referee in the hope of planting a seed that might later come to fruition, it was here. Only Styles knows why he awarded Chelsea a penalty in the 62nd minute, when Steve Finnan and Florent Malouda were involved in an entirely inoccuous collision, and only he knows why he opted to wave a second yellow card at Essien soon afterwards if, as he claims, he was not booking the player.

Both BenÍtez and Gerrard, his captain, sounded sick at the award of the penalty and it was hard not to sympathise. Liverpool, to borrow BenÍtez’s favourite phrase, had been in control of the game for the first 45 minutes and had taken a deserved lead through Torres, their club record signing from Atlético Madrid.

Chelsea got a foothold earlier in the second half, after replacing Salomon Kalou with Claudio Pizarro, but it still took a remarkable intervention from Styles to change the complexion of the game – or at least to give Lampard the opportunity to do so, which he duly took.

Mourinho said that he felt it was a fair result. Perhaps in one sense, if one looks beyond the injustice of the penalty, it was. Even Chelsea’s most unedifying quality, the one that sees John Terry and Co swarming around the referee any time a decision goes against them, is a manifestation of the mentality that Mourinho has instilled in his team. Three times in as many matches this season they have conceded the first goal – and doubtless this will be a source of concern to the Portuguese perfectionist after an otherwise productive first week of the campaign – but on each occasion they have fought back strongly. And yesterday’s point, gained at the expense of Liverpool, could in some way prove as precious as the three they won against Birmingham City and Reading.

But, no matter what other conclusions Mourinho might draw from this game, he is likely to have departed Merseyside in the knowledge that Liverpool are capable of posing a serious threat in the title race this season. Their first-half performance was highly impressive, with Gerrard and Xabi Alonso pulling the strings – the former with the benefit of a painkilling injection after sustaining a broken toe that is likely to keep him out of England’s match against Germany on Wednesday – Jermaine Pennant a menace on the right wing and, significantly, Torres showing signs of quality in attack.

Recent history carries a few cautionary tales for Liverpool’s supporters – Nigel Clough, Stan Collymore and even El-Hadji Diouf scored on their Anfield debuts – but Torres appears to have something about him. He is no great physical specimen – witness the number of times he hit the deck in the first half, with Terry imploring the referee to book the forward for diving – but his goal in the sixteenth minute as, having been sent clear by Gerrard, he bamboozled Tal Ben Haim before stroking the ball past Petr Cech, was a moment of genuine class. Anfield has a new hero.

Torres also appears to have brought a slickness to Liverpool’s play, one that could have reaped dividends in the second half, as some impressive moves resulted in chances for John Arne Riise and Dirk Kuyt, but Chelsea remain a fearsome proposition.

Their second-half fightback was strong, with Pizarro narrowly missing with a far-post ahead two minutes after his introduction, and it was the Peru forward who set up the move that culminated the equaliser, releasing Shaun Wright-Phillips, whose cross resulted in that infamous collision between Finnan and Malouda. A “phantom penalty” to go alongside Luis GarcÍa’s “phantom goal” for Liverpool in the 2005 European Cup semi-final second leg at Anfield. Inevitably, Mourinho mentioned that goal last night. And if he cannot give it up after yesterday, he never will.

Liverpool 1 Torres 16
Chelsea 1 Lampard 62 (pen)

How they rated

Liverpool 4-4-2 J M Reina Y 6 S Finnan 7 J Carragher 7 D Agger 8 Á Arbeloa 7 J Pennant Y 7 X Alonso 7 S Gerrard Y 8 J A Riise 6 F Torres 7 D Kuyt Y 7 Substitutes R Babel (for Pennant, 76min), P Crouch (for Riise, 83) Not used C Itandje, S Hyypia, J Mascherano

Chelsea 4-4-2 P Cech 7 M Essien Y 5 T Ben Haim Y 5 J Terry Y 7 A Cole Y 6 S Wright-Phillips 6 J O Mikel 6 F Lampard Y 6 F Malouda 6 S Kalou 5 D Drogba 6 Substitutes C Pizarro 6 (for Kalou, 46min), J Cole (for Wright-Phillips, 77), Alex (for Malouda, 85) Not used C Cudicini, C Makelele

Referee R Styles
Attendance 43,924