Liverpool 4 Sheffield United 0: Warnock bemoans negativity as Blades pay penalty

By way of a Nou Camp after-glow, this did nicely enough for Liverpool. Conquering heroes can do little more than return and match their biggest win of the season, so Manchester United should consider the Anfield fires well stoked for next Saturday lunchtime.

That's 30 successive home League games without defeat now and a Premiership record of nine, either side of the aberrations against Arsenal, without visiting sides scoring.

"I think we're better playing now after Champions League games," said their substitute Dirk Kuyt, whose sure touch made light of Peter Crouch's early departure with a broken nose and cut requiring 11 stitches. "We showed strength again and we're really progressing."

After Barcelona, this was a possible accident in the making for Rafa Benitez's men but victory came in a manner that disproved the theory there are no easy games in the Premiership.

Sheffield United, so feisty and formidable at Bramall Lane, became collective Victor Valdeses as they extended a helping hand Liverpool perhaps did not need.

In crumpling to a fifth successive away defeat, they conceded one questionable penalty - well, there are going to be two or three every game if Steve Bennett's clampdown on set-piece grappling becomes standard - and a clear-cut one. Twenty-five minutes, 2-0, game over.

Neil Warnock believes referees need advice from ex-players to humanise a job based on the rule book but his engaging allegation that Steven Gerrard, recipient of an even more contentious award in Sheffield in August, had pulled a gamesmanship trick was less damning than the summary of his own players.

"We were so negative in the first half," he said. "The penalties just knocked the stuffing out of us."

Liverpool played in spasms and won at a canter. So limp was the resistance that Benitez should bin the video because the contests against the other United and Barcelona will bear no resemblance to this. Nor, maybe, will a line-up which showed seven changes.

Even so, there was promise from Javier Mascherano, a debutant whose composure in the midfield sitting role gave Gerrard freedom in his favourite position to cause untold damage.

The captain rounded the slaughter off with a lovely flourish and, on an afternoon when Jerzy Dudek played his first League game of the season and Sami Hyypia scored his first Premiership goal of 2006-07, there were echoes of the more distant past.

If it was not legendary Liverpool, it was a day for Liverpool legend. Robbie Fowler converted both penalties and has scored seven times in seven starts on his farewell tour.

The less prolific Andriy Voronin is being lined up from Bayer Leverkusen and Benitez recognises that a hole is looming. "Robbie is a really good finisher, the best we have," he said. "If he's not with us next season, we'll need to look for another like him."

Maybe Warnock will move for Fowler. Charlton Athletic have pegged three points back and brought the respective goal differences considerably closer but Sheffield United appear to have enough in hand and in their locker to survive.

Goals: Fowler pen b(18) 1-0; Fowler (pen) (25) 2-0; Hyypia (71) 3-0; Gerrard (73) 4-0.

Liverpool (4-4-2): Dudek; Finnan, Hyypia, Carragher (Agger, 77), Riise; Pennant, Mascherano, Gerrard (Alonso, 74), Gonzalez; Crouch (Kuyt, 21), Fowler. Substitutes not used: Padelli (gk), Sissoko.

Sheffield United (4-5-1): Kenny; Kozluk (Kazim-Richards, 25), Jagielka, Lucketti (Morgan, 32), Armstrong; Geary, Tonge, Montgomery, Fathi, S Quinn (Stead, 66); Hulse. Substitutes not used: Davis, A Quinn.

Referee: S Bennett.

Booked: Sheffield United: Montgomery, Tonge.

Man of the match: Gerrard.

Attendance: 44,198.