Liverpool had no reason to be happy with their performance after falling to a 3-2 defeat against Fulham on Sunday.
The Reds had been expected to beat the Cottagers and open up a 14-point gap at the top of the table.
Things started well, with Alexis Mac Allister thundering home a brilliant goal to put Liverpool in front.
But from there, individual errors took hold of the Reds as they conceded three goals in 15 minutes before half-time.
It was a record-breakingly bad half for Liverpool, as they were punished for several lapses in concentration by the hosts.
Virgil van Dijk was one of those to blame, being far too easily pushed aside by Rodrigo Muniz for Fulham’s third of the afternoon. But while Van Dijk cannot have been happy with his own performance, he was also seen dishing out some strong words to some teammates.
Dominik Szoboszlai gets both barrels
There is an argument that this was Van Dijk’s worst ever display for Liverpool since his arrival in 2018. There have not been many games where the Dutchman has come off second best, but he did here.
Beyond the captain, though, the Liverpool team was littered with poor performances all over the pitch.
One of those came from Dominik Szoboszlai, and speaking on ESPN FC after the game, pundit Craig Burley says he saw both Van Dijk and Mac Allister laying into the Hungarian during the match.
“They were arguing with themselves during this game,” Burley claimed. “Van Dijk was having a pop at Szoboszlai, that’s the captain of Holland having a right go at the captain of Hungary. Mac Allister and Szoboszlai were arguing at one point during the game.”
“Sometimes that’s not a bad thing because you don’t want the complacency, but I think it tells you where they are, that they’re getting a little frustrated that they’re going to win the league but it’s all a bit of a whimper at the moment.
“They’re out of the big competitions that they were very much in the mix for and it’s almost like they just want to get it over with sooner rather than later.”
Clinton Morrison spots Van Dijk frustration
It was not only Burley who noticed how frustrated Van Dijk was with some of his Liverpool teammates.
Doing punditry work for BBC 5 Live, former striker Clinton Morrison also spotted the 33-year-old dishing out some harsh words to others.
“That’s the most I’ve ever seen Virgil van Dijk be so frustrated,” said Morrison.
“He was having a go at some of his teammates for not showing, he was sometimes kicking the ball out. You know he’s cool, calm and collected but he wasn’t, they got right under their skin, so credit to Fulham.”
In fairness, some of Virgil’s teammates would have been within their rights to have a go right back. Let’s just hope standards are back on point for Sunday’s visit of West Ham.
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