Mohamed Salah savaged his former club Roma in a superb 5-2 Champions League semi-final first-leg victory undermined by two late goals for the visitors at Anfield.
Liverpool are now 11/8 favourites with Sky Bet to win the Champions League following a stellar performance which began as a slow-burner before turning into a blistering evisceration of Serie A's third-placed team.
However, Roma showed they are still a threat with a late rally which may yet give Jurgen Klopp's side a nervous 90 minutes at the Stadio Olimpico next week.
Klopp had predicted Salah would face a rough time against the side he left in the summer but in truth none of his former team-mates could do anything to stop him.
He scored two brilliant first-half goals - his 42nd and 43rd of an incredible season - with two also for Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane on target as well as Liverpool made the most of their first Champions League semi-final in a decade.
The downside were goals from Edin Dzeko and Diego Perotti and a knee injury to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who left the pitch on a stretcher with his head in his hands and his knee in a brace to put his World Cup in some doubt.
Post-match reaction
Jurgen Klopp said afterwards: "It was a perfect performance for pretty much 80 minutes or so, then we made one defensive mistake and Dzeko made the most of the situation.
"That's the rules of the competition, each goal you score helps massively.
"I think we agree the penalty wasn't even a penalty, it's not even handball, but that's the situation and now it's 5-2.
"I would be much more happy if we had won 5-0 or 5-1 but 5-2 is still a fantastic result.
"I could not even have imagined that was possible, so the boys still did outstandingly good and we go there and try to win again, that's it."