Twinned at the top of the table with six wins and two draws from eight matches, Chelsea and Liverpool are far from identical. The difference is in the way they treat opponents. With Chelsea it is the brush-off; Liverpool, the mop-up. After Luiz Felipe Scolari’s side dismissed Middlesbrough 5-0 on Saturday, it took a manic salvage operation for Rafael Benítez’s team to join them on 20 points.

This victory over Wigan Athletic was the fifth time this season in all competitions that Liverpool have come from behind to win. Chelsea have kept five successive clean sheets. So what will happen when the sides meet at Stamford Bridge on Sunday?

Benítez hopes that his team’s morale will compensate for their deficiencies. “If they score it will be difficult to score against them,” the Liverpool manager said. “Maybe this experience will help.”

Mammon seems to have a seat on the board of most Barclays Premier League clubs these days yet the notion of moral fibre is never far from the lips of managers or players. “We showed great character,” Benítez said. Does it show more character ruthlessly to suffocate the opposition until their last breath of hope is spent, Chelsea-style, or to prove so good at tidying up a mess that Channel 4 should shoot the next episode of How Clean Is Your House? at Anfield? Perhaps Sunday will tell us.

“In a way, it showed how far we have come since last season,” Dirk Kuyt, the Liverpool forward, said. “We have improved massively and you can be sure we would only have drawn or maybe even lost a game like this 12 months ago. We passed a test with this win. We don’t want to have to dig deep like that too often, but I don’t think we will.”

Not that they put much stock around Anfield in what Americans say, but Abraham Lincoln had a line about handling power, rather than adversity, being the truest test of a man. Once Luis Antonio Valencia was sent off after 75 minutes and Wigan shrank into their shell to protect their lead, it was the visiting team, not Liverpool, who faced adversity.

Over-running ten men, the contest had never been easier for Benítez’s side. It was just a question of whether they could convert superiority into goals in the remaining time; how they would handle power. And they proved that they could savage a wounded opponent, just as they did in the previous game against the ten men of Manchester City. But is that true character, or the intersection of opportunity and attacking ability?

Amr Zaki scored the opener for Wigan after a blunder by Daniel Agger. Kuyt equalised, but Zaki struck again with an acrobatic volley just before half-time. The match turned when Valencia received two yellow cards in quick succession, both of which were strongly disputed by Steve Bruce, the Wigan manager. The first was for breaking too quickly from the wall at a free kick, the second for a dangerous tackle on Xabi Alonso. A fine goal from Albert Riera and a mis-hit effort from Kuyt inside the last ten minutes took the points.

“He [Alan Wiley, the referee] totally and utterly got it wrong,” Bruce said. “All the decisions in the second half, the little ones, went their way. When you come to Liverpool you need a little bit of fairness and a little bit of strength. Let’s just make it a game of netball where there’s no contact and that might please everybody in the Premier League.”

Liverpool (4-1-3-2)

J M Reina 6 Á Arbeloa 5 J Carragher 6 D Agger 5 A Dossena 4 J Pennant 6 X Alonso 5 S Gerrard 6 A Riera 7 D Kuyt 8 R Keane 6 Substitutes: N El Zhar (for Dossena, 78min); Y Benayoun (for Arbeloa, 79); S Hyypia (for Keane, 90). Not used: D Cavalieri, Lucas Leiva, E Insua, D Ngog. Next: Chelsea (a)

Wigan (4-5-1)

C Kirkland 6 M Melchiot 6 P Scharner 6 T Bramble 6 M Figueroa 6 D de Ridder 6 L Cattermole 6 W Palacios 6 L A Valencia 6 O Kapo 6 A Zaki 9 Substitutes: K Kilbane (for De Ridder, 79min); M Brown (for Kapo, 82); J Koumas (for Palacios, 90). Not used: M Pollitt, E Boyce, R Taylor, H Camara. Next: Aston Villa (h)