Tony Cascarino says Liverpool have a player who Mo Salah loves having on the team

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Liverpool now have a number of players who can claim to be the most important in the squad.

Although Mohamed Salah still gets most of the goals, former England goalkeeper Ben Foster recently claimed that he isn’t actually the Reds’ key man.

Jamie Carragher couldn’t decide, writing earlier in the season that Jurgen Klopp now has as many as four ‘untouchable’ players.

What both Foster and Carragher have in common is that they both mentioned Virgil van Dijk in their assessments. Liverpool’s captain is back to his best this season. Now, another to lend his voice to that conclusion is TalkSPORT pundit Tony Cascarino. The former Ireland international claimed that you only have to look at Klopp’s frequency of playing Van Dijk to see that.

“He’s never waivered on Virgil van Dijk, he’s never done that Jurgen Klopp, if he’s available,” Cascarino said. “He’s played a lot of football as well, he [Klopp] puts him in a lot of games. You see cup games and he’ll chuck him in because he knows the importance.

“He’s one of the best centre-halves ever that does that cross-field ball. Ask Mo Salah, the amount of goals. That long diagonal, not many of the centre-halves that Jason [Cundy] mentioned could do that ball.”

Cascarino hails Van Dijk

Cascarino’s comments come in retaliation to another TalkSPORT pundit – Jason Cundy – who labelled Van Dijk as ‘overrated’ this week.

Cundy’s bad take came on the back of a poor performance from Virgil midweek against Fulham.

But in all honesty, Wednesday was the first bad game we can remember the 32-year-old having all season. He’s been imperious.

Even against the Cottagers, a disappointing showing could be explained away. Van Dijk missed the clash with Arsenal three days earlier through illness. He quite clearly wasn’t fully recovered.

The winter break should allow the Dutchman to shake off any lingering effects of poor health and be back to full fitness. Then, we’re sure that Van Dijk will make the likes of Cundy eat their words.

In terms of Cascarino’s comments, they’re absolutely bang on. Whenever he’s available, the skipper is one of the very first names on the team-sheet.

His passing – and especially his long, cross-filed passing, often towards Salah – is out of this world. Just another supreme string to his bow.

Mo clearly loves playing with Van Dijk for that very reason. We love him for that, and everything besides. He’s one of the best ever and we’re lucky to have him. The rest is just noise.