This was a really good game for Arne Slot. On an afternoon when Liverpool had 35 shots in 90 scoreless minutes, then won the game with their last two in added time, and when those goals were scored by Slot’s first substitute and created by his fourth, it was above all a very good game for the idea of process, control and calm intervention.

Admittedly these are not generally qualities associated with a late match-winning, mane-tossing, nostril-snorting two-goal Darwin Núñez salvo. But this was how it played out at the Gtech under Slot’s hand. Núñez doubled his league goal tally for the season. He resembled, as ever, and at all moments, a footballer being chased around the pitch by a swarm of invisible bees. He also came away looking on the metrics like a precision stealth weapon deployed at just the right moment.

Related: Darwin Núñez’s injury-time double at Brentford keeps Liverpool on title track

Half an hour played, 10 touches, four shots, two goals. Against a Brentford team that never modified its deep counterattacking gameplan Núñez was deployed here as the human equivalent of the Hammer, the final bowl in a crown green bowling end, where you finally get to roll up your sleeves and just wang it down in search of creative chaos.

It worked because Liverpool didn’t alter their own method and manner as the prospect of another frustrating afternoon began to loom. And it was fascinating watching Slot on his touchline through the full 90 minutes, head gleaming under those low white lights, a little tender and exposed to the freezing air.

These are the games you have to win to win a league. Can you do it on a cold Saturday afternoon at an agreeable new-build ground ringed by the investment flats and delicatessens of suburban west London, faced with an elite data-driven team, and a home crowd riding a wave of being quite pleased with how things are going?

In the event this was a genuine test. Liverpool have been able to perform under very little pressure so far. To date they have only ever been in one emotional space, the unhurried frontrunner. Slot has been able to retain his own air of calm, the look even mid-match of a prosperous provincial butcher here to pick up a civic award.

This was different. How do you respond when suddenly you’re half an hour, and then 20 minutes, and then added time away from six points dropped in 13 days? The problem with easing away from the rest of the field is the feeling when suddenly you’re not doing that any more. What is Slot like in these moments? It turns out, more or less exactly the same.

The Gtech was bitterly cold at kick-off, the sky a thick dirty grey haze, like week-old pavement ice. For long periods the game was good, neat, slick, functional, and also strangely empty, a formal exercise in technique.

Brentford stuck to their plan. They have a lot of very neat well-mannered footballers who look like Danish graphic designers. For long periods here they showed great discipline, sticking with an attacking plan that was essentially just Bryan Mbeumo running really fast over the halfway line. Mbeumo played really well here. Brentford kept coming.

Slot’s refusal to be spooked, to overreact to an opponent executing its plan was interesting in itself. There will be more days like this. Mohamed Salah is clearly a little tired after playing 90 minutes every week every game. Trent Alexander-Arnold was quiet here until his own vital intervention at the death.

But still it didn’t come for Liverpool. And still Liverpool kept doing the same things. With 62 minutes gone, it was Darwin time, the first intervention from Slot, Núñez coming on with Andy Robertson. Núñez’s first act was to rise majestically, wrench his neck muscles and butt the ball weirdly wide of the goal. A bit later he spun into space and clumped a horrible shot high over the bar, one of those moments where he seems to have a heavy iron frying pan attached to his right boot. Slot still looked calm. He kept his gloves on and chewed some gum.

Seventy minutes passed with the same patterns being run. Brentford had some attacks of their own. Would Liverpool start to feel this? Eighty minutes came and went. Liverpool were up to 32 shots, six on target and 15 attacking corners. Still Slot stood hands in pockets.

He sent on Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott, his third and fourth subs. And from there Elliott had a hand in both goals, the first with a spin and pass to Alexander-Arnold. His cross was spanked hard into Núñez’s feet, so hard that he couldn’t think or move his feet or do anything but score, before running off to the fans in that corner, taking off his shirt to reveal a fine micro-fibre long-sleeve vest for which act he was booked.

A minute later it was two, Elliott with the final pass. The ball was leathered into the middle of the goal by Núñez, with a sense of all that controlled pressure finally bursting through, of drama without too much drama, and a reward for Slot’s trust in simply repeating the process. Plenty more of this will be required from here. The season is only just past its mid-point, end entering the real slog. This was a pretty decent full dress rehearsal for those other emotional states to come.