Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper predicted that his striker would be ‘a handful’ for Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk. It proved to be that way.
Nottingham Forest beat Liverpool on Saturday with a brilliant display. The defended solidly, attacked as a unit and generally had control of the game.
In other words, things didn’t go to plan for Liverpool. A big part of that was Taiwo Awoniyi up top for Forest, who went up against Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez. Steve Cooper admitted after the game that he thought the Nigerian would trouble the Reds.
“[Awoniyi] worked so hard,” said Cooper, per the Daily Mail. “We played him today we thought he could be a handful for Virgil van Dijk. He really proved to be that and deserved his goal.”
Virgil van Dijk vs Forest
Van Dijk didn’t put in a poor performance defensively here and for the most part, defender Awoniyi and co. well. The less said about him on the end of set-pieces, the better, though.
But while Van Dijk did keep them at bay, the fact Awoniyi made him work all game was a problem for Liverpool. He held the ball up well, forced them to watch his runs on the counter-attack all game long and found the goal, of course.
He was the handful Cooper predicted him to be, then. It’s a worry for Liverpool, too, as with all due respect, Awoniyi isn’t one of the world’s top strikers. A good player, yes, but not someone who should confuse the Reds. Van Dijk is a player who earns £220k a week (per Capology) because he’s supposed to easily handle such players.
But that’s a situation we’re seeing a lot this season. Players who wouldn’t usually cause any havoc are putting Liverpool on the back foot and doing it consistently for 90 minutes.
It even led to Jurgen Klopp yelling at Joe Gomez for defending too passively towards the end of the game. That’s where things have broken down to. Liverpool are losing control of games and Awoniyi’s performance was a sign of that.
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