Gary Neville noticed a pattern around Virgil van Dijk that ‘you wouldn’t really see’ before. The Dutchman struggled as Liverpool lost.
Gary Neville noticed a worrying pattern with Virgil van Dijk as Liverpool lost to Manchester United on Monday evening. The Reds were awful at Old Trafford, mainly through defensive errors and terrible positioning.
And Van Dijk was a part of that. His efforts on Jadon Sancho’s goal simply wasn’t good enough as he failed to close the player down. James Milner gave him for an earful about that.
But it wasn’t the only worry. Neville believes players feel they can get a bit more out of Van Dijk than they could before.
“One thing I’d say about Van Dijk is that there was a time maybe last season, certainly before his injury, where you wouldn’t really see players taking him on,” he told Sky Sports. “They’d refuse it. They’d just pass it.
“They are now starting to think ‘I’ve got a chance here, might just have a god at him’. So he’s got to sort that out.”
The Virgil van Dijk pattern
Van Dijk hasn’t started this season well at all. It was most obvious in the Fulham game as he gave away that penalty but he’s just seemed slow.
“Van Dijk, he’s been really off it,” is how Roy Keane described his opening games. It’s hard to disagree.
Keane and Neville also agreed that there’s not a massive issue there and no one should panic, but it is a sign of Liverpool’s start this season. Things just aren’t clicking as they have done and it’s not completely clear why.
And so it will be interesting to see how Klopp reacts. On the one hand, maybe he should trust his players to push through a poor patch. On the other, their pattern of conceding goals is carrying over from last season. It might take drastic action to fix it.
This is the very first time we’re questioning Van Dijk and this back four but they’re valid questions. What we’ve seen so far this season simply isn’t good enough and teams are fancying their chances.
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