In his compelling recent autobiography, Jamie Carragher, in the nicest possible way, likened Rafael Benítez to a “pub bore” - a man with an answer to everything. Yesterday morning at the club's Melwood training ground, with his Liverpool team top of the Barclays Premier League table and about to travel to White Hart Lane, scene of his first match in English football in August 2004, seemed a good time to put the theory - and the Spaniard's memory - to the test as he was asked to name his starting line-up that day.

For a moment, it seemed that the Liverpool manager was about to rise to the challenge - Dudek, Josemi ... - but he stopped short, saying that he did not want to tarnish his reputation by making any mistakes. You sensed that, with a little cajoling, he would have got it, right down to the men on the substitutes' bench, but instead he preferred to advance the conversation. “It shows that we have improved, no?” he said.

Of the 16 men in Benítez's squad against Tottenham Hotspur that occasion, for a 1-1 draw on the first day of the 2004-05 campaign, only three - Carragher, Sami Hyypia and Steven Gerrard - are still at the club. The pace of change has been even more dramatic at Tottenham - they were managed at the time by Jacques Santini and had such luminaries as Noureddine Naybet, Phil Ifil and Johnnie Jackson in their starting line-up - but Liverpool's return to White Hart Lane this evening seemed the ideal context for Benítez to reflect on the evolution of a squad that finally looks as if it may be equipped for a title challenge.

Catch him in the right mood and Benítez might joke about the paucity of the group of players he encountered on his first day at pre-season training at Anfield in 2004 (Patrice Luzi, Salif Diao, Bruno Cheyrou) and even about the team, who miraculously, won the Champions League that season. He can reminisce fondly about those who have served a purpose in the short term (Mohamed Sissoko, Peter Crouch, Craig Bellamy) and those who came and went without making an impression (Antonio Núñez, Jan Kromkamp, Mark González) and even that he has an entirely different backroom staff now, but, for all that the pace of change has been dizzying at times, Liverpool look a force to be reckoned with in the league once more.

“When you arrive in the Premier League you have a lot of confidence and you think that maybe in one year, maybe in three years, you can change everything,” Benítez said yesterday. “But then you can see the Premier League is really difficult and you know that if you want to be a contender you have to change many things. So little by little we have changed these things and you can see now the difference between that squad and the squad we have at the moment. We are improving. That is clear.

“When we were being successful in Europe, people were talking about the Premier League. We were trying to bring in players who could settle down quickly in the Premier League, so we signed players like [Jermaine] Pennant, Bellamy, Crouch. They knew the Premier League. You need quality, desire, passion, character, a lot of things together. That is the reason why you need to change players, players who can bring something and perform during the season.

“And now, little by little, you have to say that now Daniel Agger has almost everything, Martin Skrtel, Javier Mascherano, Pepe Reina, Xabi Alonso. We are improving and I think we will improve over the next year.”

The impact made by this summer's signings has been limited, with Albert Riera the pick so far. The improvement has been brought about primarily by those players already at the club. Benítez firmly expects Andrea Dossena to establish himself at left back, once he has adapted to English football, and for Robbie Keane, whose two goals for the club have come in the Champions League, to start to show the form that prompted Liverpool to pay £20.3million to sign him from Tottenham during the summer.

“I am sure Robbie will score more goals,” Benítez said. “He is doing better and I am really pleased with him. The understanding with his team-mates is better. He is getting in good positions for finishing, so he will score more. It is just a question of time.”

A question of time is a good way of putting it and, having presided over a gradual improvement in a team who were spearheaded in his first season by Milan Baros and Djibril Cissé, before flirtations with Crouch, Bellamy, Fernando Morientes, Robbie Fowler and Andriy Voronin, Benítez is entitled to feel that, with Keane supporting Fernando Torres, Liverpool finally have a worthy strike partnership. Indeed the club have been good enough to thrive in Torres's recent absence, but yesterday's bulletin, that the Spain forward is close to fitness after a hamstring injury and has a chance of being among the substitutes this evening, will only heighten the optimism among Liverpool's fans.

Such has been their faith in Benítez from Day 1 that they could not have imagined, when heading to White Hart Lane, that it would take until his fifth season for a credible Liverpool title challenge to be under discussion. It may have taken longer than they expected, but, as a pub bore will tell you, good things come to those who wait.