ESPN pundit takes aim at Virgil van Dijk over one thing he saw from Liverpool captain on Sunday
One pundit has called out Virgil van Dijk over something that he saw from the Liverpool captain in the defeat to Manchester United on Sunday.
Like his team in general, the 34-year-old endured a day to forget at Anfield, being culpable for an error in the lead-up to Bryan Mbeumo’s early goal (although play should’ve been stopped for a head injury to Alexis Mac Allister) and being criticised by Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville for his overall performance.
The Dutchman’s tough evening was summed up in one second-half incident when an attempted clearance smacked off the face of Milos Kerkez (who was also the recipient of stinging post-match criticism) and nearly rebounded into the home team’s net.
Burley fumes at Van Dijk for ‘blaming’ Kerkez
Craig Burley took aim at Van Dijk for exchanging cross words with his defensive teammate after that shambolic episode and accused the skipper of piling in on the Hungarian when the latter is already finding it challenging to settle into Arne Slot’s line-up.
The pundit said on ESPN FC: “Virgil van Dijk to me is not leading at the moment. He’s blaming.
“Kerkez is having a bad time, there’s no doubt about it. He’s getting swallowed up by the pressure of going in with these big players in this huge football club with these big expectations, but I don’t think it helps when your captain’s looking at him every two minutes and blaming him or digging him out.
“Even at the end, the clearance that comes off Kerkez’s face. What’s he supposed to do? He’s tucking in behind Van Dijk. Van Dijk’s turning around and he’s gesturing to him. The crowd see it and I just don’t think that helps the situation.”
Van Dijk is a Liverpool legend but he had an off-day v Man United
Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further – Virgil van Dijk has been nothing short of a game-changer for Liverpool and will rightly go down in history as one of the club’s greatest ever centre-backs.
However, yesterday he endured one of the poorest performances of his eight years at Anfield, with his decision-making being unusually erroneous, most notably for Mbeumo’s goal inside the first two minutes.
There were times against Man United when Kerkez’s positioning was questionable, and we’ve no issue with the captain being vociferous in demanding better from his teammates during a chastening period for the Reds.
That said, Van Dijk will be honest enough to look in the mirror and acknowledge that he was nowhere near his usual world-class best on Sunday, which was perhaps the worst possible occasion for a Liverpool player to fall short of their typical standards.
The cohesion which formed the bedrock of our Premier League title triumph last season just hasn’t been there for LFC since the start of this campaign, and it’s something they need to discover quickly if they’re to avoid falling further off the pace being set by Arsenal.
You can watch Slot’s full post-Manchester United press conference via Empire of the Kop on YouTube:
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