Sturridge scores winner for Liverpool to mark Bill Shankly's 100th birthday

Daniel Sturridge (extreme left) celebrates after taking an early lead over defending champions Manchester United

The second half saw no changes from either side but the break appeared to have encouraged a faltering United side as they managed to retain more possession.

Liverpool may not have been in charge of the ball but they were still constantly applying pressure on United, making it as difficult as possible for them to find a way through. I was very pleased with this aspect of our game because I don’t feel we looked as positive last season when we weren’t in possession, whereas so far this season, we have exactly the right attitude and set-up for these situations.

Just before the hour mark, Liverpool made their first substitution replacing Iago Aspas with Raheem Sterling. I must admit Aspas didn’t have the best of games for me and he looked a little bit out of touch.

I was pleased to see Sterling enter the fray but this raised the only negative I’d spotted and that was the weakness of the bench. The addition of Sakho, Ilori and Moses will obviously help this situation but for me we still lack a little bit of edge. We don’t have too many players we can bring on to really change a game.

Shortly after our sub, United also made one bringing on Nani for Ashley Young. Nani has been out injured for a while and it was clear he’d been out of play for some time, his touch was just short of terrible and the United fans surrounding me in the pub were constantly moaning about his performance.

It really didn’t look like United were going to be able to find themselves a goal. They may have improved their performance in comparison to the first half but Liverpool were adamant that they would not break through.

Hernandez also came on for United with 20 minutes to go and he’s always on the look out for a last-minute goal but not even he could alter Moyes’ fate of never winning at Anfield.

Liverpool made another substitution late on after Johnson was injured. The in-coming Andre Wisdom did well to keep his composure in a high tempo game. And finally, Luis Alberto replaced Coutinho with seven minutes left of full time.

In the second half, United had forced Simon Mignolet into a couple of saves but nothing was getting past the man who has yet to concede in the Premier League.

Very late on, Liverpool nearly doubled their lead after a Raheem Sterling strike was tipped over the bar by David De Gea but it wasn’t to be. Liverpool weren’t bothered though, they had just recorded yet another win in the Premier League and over Manchester United!

I think we can all admit that the Reds were not playing to their best yesterday but that’s the thing, if you can beat Manchester United whilst you’re playing poorly that quite simply is brilliant.

We’d have never won that game yesterday if it was last season. We’d have crumbled and to see us fight on for the 90 minutes and hold on to a 1-0 lead was fantastic.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not bothered how we go about winning at the moment. You can keep your sexy football, I’d rather take 1-0 wins all season and with Sturridge in the form that he is, with Suarez still to come back, this really is an exciting time for a Liverpool fan.

Oh and in case you hadn’t noticed… we’re top of the league!

Next up for Liverpool is Swansea.