Jose Mourinho stood motionless on the touchline. Behind him Liverpool's fans were going delirious in the stands as a second deflected Xherdan Shaqiri strike crept beyond David de Gea.
'Sacked in the morning' came the inevitable howls from around him as Liverpool leapt back to the top of the table and Manchester United slipped further adrift of the top four. 'You're getting sacked in the morning'.
They weren't far off. Within 48 hours Mourinho was put out of his misery and replaced by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Mourinho cut a lonely, almost tragicomic, figure on the Anfield touchline as the December rain hurled down. He could be forgiven for giving a rueful smile.
The stadium that had delivered so many defining moments in a career hardly short of incident, had just offered another.
This was Mourinho's lowest ebb. The 10 months he then took away from the game before landing the Tottenham job were the longest he had ever been out of management.
On Saturday he will face the music once more, though not in the cauldron of Anfield. His new club Tottenham host a Liverpool side that have gone from strength to strength since he last faced them 13 months ago. They were good then, but now they are an altogether different prospect.
He has already called them the best team in the world, the sort of comment that would have once generated headlines is now met by a mere shrug of the shoulders.
He said: 'Yesterday I was watching the Liverpool match, and I think I was watching the best team in the world, in this moment. And then I google it, just to confirm, Jurgen [Klopp] arrived October 2015. October 2015. 16, 17, 18, 19 and now 20.
'I think eight transfer windows. I think lots of players leaving, lots of players coming. And even more important than that, time for him to put his philosophy, to put his training methods, to put his fingerprint [on the club].
'Beautiful results as a consequence of fantastic work, step by step, phase by phase. I think in the first season they finish something like sixth or eighth or something like that and four years later they are not just the world champions, I think they are the best team in the world, in this moment.'
With 19 wins from 20 games, Klopp's side are the champions elect, 13 points clear at the top with a game in hand and now, surely, eyeing a campaign to match Arsenal's Invincibles.
If anyone will want to get one over Liverpool now, it is Mourinho. Few rivalries exist between clubs and managers, but this is one notable exception that dates back nearly 16 years. And the bad blood continues to run deep.
It was in 2004, with Gerard Houllier approaching the end, when Mourinho made his first Liverpool-related move.
'Liverpool are a team that interests everyone,' he admitted. 'Chelsea does not interest me so much, because it is a new project with lots of money invested in it.
'It is a project which, if the club fail to win everything, then [Roman] Abramovich could retire and take the money out of the club. It's an uncertain project.'
The exuberant dance down the Old Trafford touchline in the Champions League that February, which truly announced his arrival in English football, convinced chief executive Rick Parry that he was actually unsuited to Liverpool.
Houllier was duly sacked in June, but amid the Anfield radio silence Mourinho was wooed by Chelsea. Liverpool went instead for Rafa Benitez, who had just won a LaLiga and UEFA Cup double at Valencia.
Captain Steven Gerrard, a player Mourinho made no secret of his admiration for and dearly wanted to bring to Chelsea, believes it would have been a match made in heaven.
'It would have been a perfect match,' he wrote in his autobiography. 'The Liverpool fans would have loved him, and he would have known exactly how to turn that love into adoration. He would have loved managing at Anfield, too.'
A new era was beginning, and the touchpaper was inadvertently lit by Gerrard in the League Cup final that season. His late own goal sent the game to extra-time and Mourinho could not resist a smug celebration in front of the Liverpool fans. He strolled down the touchline and put his finger to his mouth to shush them.
Just a few months later it was Mourinho who was left seething as Luis Garcia's 'ghost goal' gave Liverpool victory in their Champions League semi-final.
Liverpool v Chelsea became the rivalry of the age, the successor to Manchester United v Arsenal. They met 16 times in just three seasons.
In three semi-final meetings in both Europe and the FA Cup, Liverpool won each time. In 2007, Benitez commented on his soured relationship with Mourinho: 'We were good friends until we started winning, then he started changing his mind.'
There is no doubt that Liverpool got under his skin. It was the club he wanted, and the club that was denying him the unrivalled success he craved at Stamford Bridge.
It would be nearly seven years before Mourinho returned to Anfield again, this time in his second spell at Chelsea. And this was to be an occasion he would truly savour.
Under Brendan Rodgers Liverpool were closing in on a first league title in 24 years after an incredible 11-game winning streak with a six-point lead at the top and three games to go.
Mourinho, however, was in no mood to be an onlooking spectator. He told his Chelsea players: 'They want us to be the clowns in the circus.
'The circus is here. Liverpool are to be champions. But we are not going to be the clowns.'
An unshaved, unkempt Mourinho wore a white tracksuit took training on the pitch before kick-off having been unwell in the build-up. He even travelled separate from his team.
A much-changed Chelsea, in between Champions League semi-final legs against Atletico Madrid, deliberately slowed down the game and stifled their opponents. It was a Mourinho masterclass.
Demba Ba's opener had a touch of fortune about it after Steven Gerrard's slip, but Mourinho was not sheepish in celebrating the second.
He bellowed and thumped his chest as he ran towards the Chelsea fans in the corner, celebrating Willian's late goal. The wheels fell off for Liverpool, as Manchester City beat them to the league title.
A game that was meant to be all about Liverpool, became all about Mourinho and utterly shaped in his image. One of the abiding images, besides the slip, is of Gerrard and Jon Flanagan trying to take the ball of Mourinho on the touchline as Liverpool sought to take a quick throw.
He has done it before, and you sure can bet that he'd love to do it again. He doesn't have enough to derail Liverpool's title challenge this season, but he certainly has it in him to ruin their grand plan.
Klopp's side are unbeaten in their last 37 league games and are chasing not just glory but immortality. As ever, Mourinho will be desperate to have the last say.
If Liverpool are to finally lose, who knows what effect that will have on a side looking to end 30 years of hurt.