Virgil van Dijk sounds the alarm after Liverpool’s 0-3 debacle against Nottingham and openly criticizes his teammates.
Virgil van Dijk said twice on Saturday evening that Liverpool FC is in a “mess.” Whether you want to translate that as a mess, a fiasco, or chaos, the Reds are in trouble, and their captain has little desire to simply accept it.
After the 3-0 debacle against bottom-of-the-table Nottingham Forest, which saw the defending champions plummet to eleventh place in the table, van Dijk made a fiery speech with a clear goal: he wanted to finally shake his teammates awake.
“Fundamental things are not being implemented sufficiently”
“We had three or four great days of preparation, but in a game you have to deal with the facts, and the facts are that we conceded a set piece in the first half and a terrible goal at the start of the second,” the defensive leader told reporters in the mixed zone.
After falling behind at halftime following a corner—the ninth goal conceded this season from a set piece (excluding penalties)—the Reds calmly allowed the visitors to score the decisive 2-0 goal less than 40 seconds after the restart.
This was “unacceptable,” van Dijk emphasized, appealing: “I want everyone on the pitch to take responsibility. If someone presses, you have to press too. These are basic things, but they are not being implemented sufficiently.” Liverpool have now lost six of their last seven league games, compared to four in the entire previous season.
“Go home and cry? No.”
Coach Arne Slot is also under increasing pressure to come up with solutions for the recurring weaknesses. “We are definitely letting him down, but we are also letting ourselves down,” van Dijk said, directing his criticism at the team. “Right now, it’s a mess — that’s just a fact.”
The only way out of this is to work together, without “pointing fingers at each other.” The next challenge is already coming up on Wednesday with the Champions League home game against PSV Eindhoven. “So what am I going to do? Go home and cry? No, I’m going to go home and think about how we can turn things around,” the captain leads the way. “And hopefully everyone else will do the same.”