Liverpool overcame ten-man Hull at the KC Stadium to take all the points in a 3-1 victory. Xabi Alonso struck first for the visitors after his initial free-kick was blocked.
Relegation threatened Hull then faced the final half hour with ten men after Caleb Folan kicked out at Martin Skrtel.
And Skrtel it was who set up Dirk Kuyt for Liverpool to double their lead on 63 minutes.
Hull were clearly aggrieved with the performance of referee Martin Atkinson and felt there had been a handball by Lucas Leiva in the build up to the Reds second goal.
The Holland striker then clinched the three points in the final minute after Geovanni had briefly given Hull hope of salvaging a draw.
Reds boss Rafa Benitez told the clubs official web site: "Everyone has to be really pleased at the club because Kuyt is a fantastic professional who always works so hard.
"It was very good for him to score on his 100th game - very positive. I'm really pleased for him."
Benitez added: "The sending off was clear - I watched the replay. After this, credit to them - they had 10 men but were still pushing.
"We deserved to win so I'm happy - we got three points from a difficult game. It was difficult because they worked hard and were pushing.
"It's always dangerous (against relegation strugglers) because you know they will fight until the end. We talked about it before. We needed to be calm and challenge for every single ball.
"We were a little bit nervous because the pitch was terrible. The grass was long and it was very difficult to pass the ball. That means you can make mistakes when the other teams goes to press.
"But you have to accept this situation because it's part of the game, and we were better in the second half.
"We were a little bit nervous but we showed character."
Hull boss Phil Brown believes the Tigers can still survive the drop.
"We keep our best for the best and we need to keep it for the teams that aren't the best.
"We have two games coming up against the best (Aston Villa and Manchester United) and two others so the game plan is there.
"We will be close to survival if we win the games against the sides around us (Stoke and Bolton)."
Brown added: "Losing doesn't bring any satisfaction but today we asked for the level of commitment we had against Sunderland and we had that."
