Liverpool this season have been very good at being good enough. There have been very few games in which they’ve dismantled the opposition. They have won fewer league games by more than three goals than Tottenham have, but ended the day nine points clear at the top with their closest rivals to play the defending champions on Sunday. If Liverpool do, as they surely will, go on to win the title, it will have been an old-fashioned sort of success, a league won not by the spectacular or the flamboyant but by consistency and calmness, by ruthless accumulation.

This was Liverpool’s sixth 2-0 win in the league; more than a quarter of their games so far. It’s a scoreline that speaks of control, of winning games with a little to spare, taking freakish equalisers, ill luck and odd refereeing decisions out of the equation, without being flashy and demanding overexertion: 2-0 is the scoreline of champions. Arsenal, like Liverpool, began the season with a pair of 2-0 wins but, since then, they have won 2-0 only once.

Related: Salah halts Bournemouth’s charge and sends Liverpool nine points clear

When optimistic Arsenal fans looked at the second half of the season and noted that Liverpool had some tricky away games to play, this was one of the fixtures they would have earmarked as having the potential to cost Arne Slot’s side points. Bournemouth had beaten not only Arsenal at home but also Manchester City and Nottingham Forest. And they could easily have taken a point off Liverpool, Antoine Semenyo and Marcus Tavernier clattering shots against the post.

There has been a sense with Liverpool that they have played teams at the right time, just at the point when they are out of sorts or have key players missing.

While there probably is some truth to that, it is also the case that Liverpool are very good at making opponents look as though they are in poor form. And nobody could have claimed that Bournemouth were not playing well before Saturday. If anything, their form was too good, having scored nine in their previous two games. Nobody can keep a shot conversion rate of 25% going for long. That Bournemouth got only three of 14 shots on target, two of those drawing excellent saves from Alisson, is perhaps a rare visible case of regression to the mean.

Lucky Liverpool? Possibly – as even Slot acknowledged. Certainly the penalty they were awarded in the first half will raise eyebrows. That Cody Gakpo kicked the back of his own heel was clear; the question was whether he was nudged into doing so by Lewis Cook. At the very least the decision was soft. The offside decision that saw the equaliser David Brooks seemed to have scored before half-time ruled out was correct, but it was a close-run thing.

But Liverpool’s second goal was one of rare quality, Curtis Jones beginning the break, catching up with it and feeding Mohamed Salah, who scored with the perfect finish, whipping the ball with very little backlift round Milos Kerkez and the stretching arm of Kepa Arrizabalaga and just inside the far post. It was a goal of efficiency and beauty, technically excellent and without the slightest needless embellishment and, as such, emblematic of Slot’s team as a whole.

It is true that they could easily have conceded, true that the shots that were flying in for Bournemouth over the past two weeks did not on Saturday – a process that culminated in the ferocious late drive from Tavernier that smashed into what might politely be termed the nether regions of Tyler Adams – but equally Liverpool defended with admirable composure.

Virgil van Dijk, as so often, was a colossal figure, not only winning his duels with Dango Ouattara but radiating calm, constantly organising and cajoling. He is not only a very fine defender, arguably back to being the best centre-back in the league, but also a great leader. There has been rather less focus on Van Dijk than on the other two players who are out of contract in June, perhaps because he is 33, and perhaps because the assumption is that he is more likely than either Trent Alexander-Arnold or Salah to sign a new deal, but if he does leave he would be sorely missed, not only for what he himself offers but because he makes players around him better.

Liverpool still have to go to Everton, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Chelsea. They still have to play Arsenal at home. There are hurdles to be negotiated. But given the sides Bournemouth have beaten at the Vitality this season, this was a big obstacle ticked off. There are 15 games left. The title race is not over yet. But Liverpool felt a lot closer to the tape at the final whistle than they had at kick-off.