Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk admitted the squad are letting their manager Arne Slot down and questioned whether everyone was taking responsibility for what he labelled “a mess.”
Van Dijk was one of many players in red who desperately struggled during a dismal 3–0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Saturday afternoon. Not for the first time this season, the cerebral skipper was tasked with facing the media in the aftermath of an underwhelming result, yet, he appeared to be particularly angry on this occasion.
“We are definitely letting him [Slot] down,” Van Dijk fumed, “but we’ve let ourselves down as well. You look at yourself first and then you help each other, you help each other get out of this mess because at the moment it is a mess—that’s just a fact.
“As the champions we can’t be in the situation we are in right now. What are we going to do about it? We’re going to try to turn it around and that’s the mentality everyone should have.”
Liverpool have lost half of their opening 12 Premier League games for just the second time in the competition’s 33-year history. The 2015–16 iteration of Chelsea are the only defending champions ever to have lost more league games at this point of a season than Slot’s side.
What a difference a year makes.
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Liverpool have been humbled at home by Nottingham Forest - how do they stop the rot? pic.twitter.com/lblXmaHcpl
“You should be angry,” Van Dijk continued, clearly fitting that brief himself. “The main thing for me is that everyone has to take responsibility.”
It was put to Van Dijk whether his teammates were indeed following those orders. “I don’t know,” he unconvincingly replied.
“But you have to do that. It’s the main thing I want the boys to do. It’s not easy during difficult times but we have to do it if we want to get out of this.”
Van Dijk Defends Liverpool’s New Signings
Plenty of the public ire has been turned on the players who arrived this summer for a combined outlay of £450 million ($588.6 million). The most expensive of those, Alexander Isak, was widely pilloried after another anonymous showing on Saturday afternoon. Yet, Van Dijk was keen to defend the new recruits, in a way. “It’s tough for everyone,” he pointed out.
Rather than anything tactical, Van Dijk bemoaned a lack of endeavour. “When someone is pressing, you have to follow the press,” he explained. “It’s basic things but it’s not happening enough.”
“We had a great three or four days’ preparation,” the Dutch international continued, “but in a game you are dealing with facts and the facts are we conceded a set piece in the first half and a terrible goal at the start of the second half.”
‘Liverpool Must Go Again, Again and Again’
Van Dijk was keen to stress that he is not a “quitter.”
“You have to be a man and face the toughness and go again, again and again because if you want to give up then you are at the wrong place in my eyes, because this club has been going through many adversity over those years and we’ve always come out of it,” Liverpool’s captain seethed. “But it doesn’t mean it is easy, it’s tiring but there is no other way.”
The Reds return to Anfield on Wednesday for a Champions League tie against PSV Eindhoven—one of the few sides which beat Liverpool while they were in fine form last season.
“Wednesday is another game so what am I going to do, go home and cry?” Van Dijk asked. “No, I’m going to go home and try to think how we can turn this around and hopefully that is what everyone is doing as well.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘A Mess’—Virgil van Dijk Takes Aim at Liverpool Teammates in Furious Tirade.
