Seldom has relegation met such an ovation. Rapturous applause rang around The Hawthorns after Tony Mowbray’s team went down playing the way they have attempted to all season, taking the game to superior opponents and placing aesthetics above logistics.

Such an other-worldly set of Corinthian values, so bizarrely at odds with the money-driven attitude that has taken over the game in the past two decades, place West Bromwich Albion in the same bracket as Arsenal: relative failure is commended because it comes so attractively wrapped.

West Brom have played their way back into the Coca-Cola Championship, just as they did into the Barclays Premier League last year, and to the Wembley play-off final 12 months before that. The response of the Hawthorns populace should go no small way to ensuring that Mowbray is offered the opportunity to try to keep his team boing-boinging between the divisions next season but, while he can spot a creative midfield player a mile off and deserves immense credit for ensuring that his team keep passing the ball whatever the scoreline, is the West Brom manager really so immune from culpability?

Mowbray has bought Shelton Martis not once but twice. In their time together with Hibernian, the Netherlands Antilles defender gifted Heart of Midlothian a goal in the opening 30 seconds of the Edinburgh derby and was substituted at half-time. He did not play for Hibernian again. Yet Mowbray took him to The Hawthorns for £50,000 two years ago.

If it seems harsh to select one defender from a flawed set, Martis was the man to let a standard channel ball bounce over his head in the opening two minutes of a crucial game at home to Stoke City recently, enabling Ricardo Fuller to open the scoring. He was at it again yesterday.

It was a moment that summed up why West Brom are where they are. In charge of the game, on top of Liverpool and with their tails up, the home side sensed that an upset was there for the taking. Then Martis, receiving an easy square pass from Jonas Olsson, took his eye off the ball and miscontrolled it at precisely the moment the best goalscoring midfield player in Europe came into his vicinity. Steven Gerrard strolled on, had time to turn round and say thank you very much, and chipped the ball over Dean Kiely, the goalkeeper.

It could have been Ryan Donk, or Abdoulaye Méïté, or even Scott Carson, because West Brom defenders lose concentration at the key moments of a game on a regular basis. For all that they played the ball around in the middle third of the field as well as a team who are about to finish runners-up in the Premier League, they do miss crucial opportunities — as Jonathan Greening did in the fifth minute yesterday, José Manuel Reina saving twice as the West Brom captain was left free at the back post after Chris Brunt’s corner — and concede goals cheaply.

“That epitomised us,” Mowbray said of Martis’s mistake. “But he cost us £50,000; he didn’t cost £15 million. He’s a good man who wants to get better and will get better.

“The overriding thought is one of disappointment for the supporters, because we have been relegated, frustration as well because I think today’s game really epitomised our season. There was a lot of good play, plenty of chances and yet we give the opposition a goal for nothing. The frustration is that I think we are a better team now than we have been for much of the season.”

Liverpool, lax initially after Manchester United had put the title beyond them a day earlier, went into cruise mode after Gerrard’s 24th goal of the season and could easily have scored three times for a sixth successive league game for the first time since 1896, Kiely tipping Fernando Torres’s header on to the crossbar.

Even though Marc-Antoine Fortuné so nearly equalised after Juan Carlos Menseguez squared unselfishly, it was little surprise when Dirk Kuyt ran into the wide-open space offered him by Donk and shot home after Gerrard’s reverse pass. Luke Moore shot against a post and Fortuné headed over from close range but, beautifully though West Brom went forward, Liverpool always had more gears to go through if required.

West Bromwich Albion (4-4-2): D Kiely 7 - G Zuiverloon 6, S Martis 5, J Olsson 5, R Donk 4 - C Brunt 6, Y Mulumbu 8, R Koren 7 - J Greening 7 M-A Fortuné 6 J C Menseguez 6. Substitutes: B Valero 6 (for Martis, 56min), L Moore 6 (for Mulumbu, 68). Not used: S Carson, F Teixeira, A Méïté, J Simpson, C Wood. Next: Blackburn Rovers (a).

Liverpool (4-2-3-1): J M Reina 6 - Á Arbeloa 5, J Carragher 6, D Agger 6, E Insua 5 - Lucas Leiva 5, J Mascherano 5 - D Kuyt 6, S Gerrard 7, Y Benayoun 5 - F Torres 5. Substitutes: R Babel 5 (for Torres, 69min), D Ngog (for Benayoun, 73). Not used: D Cavalieri, A Dossena, A Riera, X Alonso, M Skrtel. Next: Tottenham Hotspur (h).