Virgil van Dijk exposes national journalist’s HORRENDOUS Liverpool take

A whole lot of nonsense was written about Liverpool during their losing streak, and perhaps the most ridiculous take of all has been badly exposed by Virgil van Dijk.

Liverpool opened their Premier League campaign with five wins on the bounce. In truth, the Reds’ performances didn’t deserve five consecutive victories, nor did their displays warrant the four successive losses that followed.

Liverpool were comfortably outplayed against Crystal Palace and Brentford, but were the better team in the two clashes versus Chelsea and Manchester United in-between.

Nevertheless, four defeats on the spin ramped up the pressure ahead of Liverpool’s clash with Aston Villa on Saturday. Arne Slot even turned the heat up on himself after resting so many players in the midweek League Cup loss to bogey team Palace.

And ahead of the Villa tie, journalist Jeremy Cross – who is the chief football writer for The Daily Star and also published by The Mirror and Liverpool Echo – gave Slot one of the most ludicrous pieces of advice you’ll ever wish to hear.

Cross’ headline in his piece for The Echo read: ‘Arne Slot must swallow his pride – it’s time for Liverpool to drop Virgil van Dijk.’

The copy and justification for that mind-bending claim made little sense either, with Brentford being misspelled as Branford just one of many errors contained within.

Van Dijk is Liverpool’s true leader, both on the pitch and off it. And while he’s had a difficult moment or two this season, he’s still been comfortably Liverpool’s best defender.

Naturally, Slot did not listen and selected his captain for the Villa game, and according to The Mirror’s Andy Dunn, Van Dijk was back to his dominant best.

Dunn wrote: ‘Virgil van Dijk was back. Back to his commanding best, back to marshalling a defence that kept its first clean sheet in seven weeks.

‘If there have been two characters whose roles in Liverpool’s slump have been highlighted, it has been the Anfield captain and Mohamed Salah, whose 250th Liverpool goal set the champions on their way to a much-needed win that was confirmed by a second half strike from Ryan Gravenberch.

‘They might suggest their form had been harshly judged but it was no coincidence the two long-standing luminaries of Slot’s team were back to something like their shining best against Villa.’

How Van Dijk compares to other centre-backs this season

Against Villa, Van Dijk completed the most passes of any player on the pitch with 77, eight of which were played into the final third. From a defensive standpoint he was nearly flawless.

From a purely statistical point of view, Van Dijk is Liverpool’s fourth-best performing player this season with an average rating of 7.29 per match, per FotMob. Only Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai are returning a higher average score.

That places him first among all Liverpool defenders this season and fifth among all centre-backs in the Premier League, behind Gabriel Magalhaes, Marc Guehi, William Saliba and Maxence Lacroix. Remarkable, really, when you consider the Reds have shipped 14 goals in just 10 matches.

Clearly, Slot would do well to continue disregarding some of the nonsense that is written about his club from sources and publications that really should know better.

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