If Liverpool were anything like as consistent in the Barclays Premier League as they are in Europe, it might be Rafael Benítez’s team, not Manchester United, boasting a seven-point lead at the top of the table.

Liverpool arrived at the Bernabéu Stadium last night with a game plan and executed it perfectly, a thoroughly deserved win against Real Madrid secured courtesy of Yossi Benayoun’s 82nd-minute header. They will be very much the favourites to progress to the Champions League quarter-finals by the time the Spanish champions visit fortress Anfield for the second leg on Tuesday week.

It was not pretty — it rarely is under Benítez in Europe — but it was pragmatism personified, and against a Real team gripped by fear and unable to deal with Liverpool’s long-ball tactics, this was just the pick-me-up that the Merseyside club and their manager needed after a difficult couple of months.

Vujadin Boskov, the Real coach when they lost the 1981 European Cup final to Liverpool, had described that team as “programmed and machine-like” and the same can be said for Benítez’s impressively drilled outfit, even if it would be kind to the home team to say that they were disappointing.

By the end, the Real supporters were fighting among themselves, the sucker punch that was Benayoun’s first goal in Europe this season ultimately proving too much for some to take. Fábio Aurélio whipped in a free kick from the right and the Israel midfield player, one of the smallest on the pitch, rose unmarked to head home.

If there was a downside for Liverpool, it was the sight of Fernando Torres leaving the pitch shortly after the hour mark, the Spain striker hampered by a knock to the ankle that he had sustained in the first minute, but it said everything about the spirit in this team that victory was secured with neither Torres nor Steven Gerrard, their talisman, on the pitch at the time.

The build-up had been overshadowed by a wave of rumours that Benítez would resign or be sacked after the game, claims that had gathered such a head of steam in the hours before kick-off that bookmakers had even suspended betting on the Liverpool manager being the next to go in the Premier League.

The Merseyside club have become accustomed to dealing with all kinds of tittle-tattle since the arrival of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr, the American owners, two years ago, although even by Liverpool’s recent standards, the latest round of speculation about Benítez’s future appeared faintly ridiculous.

The game may have lacked the drama that had preceded it, but Benítez will not mind that. The Liverpool manager continues to divide opinion, but in Europe, he rarely gets it wrong and this performance represented another feather in his cap.

Gerrard was kept on the substitutes’ bench, Benítez clearly deeming that it was not worth his captain aggravating a hamstring tear, and in their influential midfield player’s absence, Liverpool resorted to employing the kind of route-one tactics once favoured by Wimbledon.

It hardly made for fast, free-flowing football but it took Real by surprise and only once, when Arjen Robben forced José Manuel Reina into a fingertip save, did the Spanish team trouble their opponents. To limit Real at the Bernabéu to one notable chance spoke volumes for the control exhibited by Liverpool.

Real seemed averse to taking the initiative and punishing their opponents’ cautiousness, leaving the visiting team relatively untroubled as they sat back, soaked up what little pressure they came under and punted balls up to Dirk Kuyt and Torres.