Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk delivered a stark assessment after Saturday\u2019s 4\u20130 FA Cup quarterfinal defeat to Manchester City, saying his side effectively \u201cgave up\u201d as the contest slipped away.<\/p>\n
The Reds had a halftime window to regroup but conceded twice more before the hour mark. Dominik Szoboszlai said he and his teammates had lacked a \u201cfighting spirit\u201d and suitable mentality. Van Dijk was more direct in the mixed zone: \u201cObviously, you come with the right intentions out of the dressing room to hopefully score the [goal to make it] 2\u20131 as soon as possible to change the game. But obviously the opposite happens,\u201d the Dutch center back sighed to assembled reporters in the postmatch mixed zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come back from 3\u20130 is obviously very difficult over here. But also, you shouldn\u2019t give up, and maybe at a certain point that\u2019s what happened.\u201d The final 30 minutes passed without consequence as City controlled play. Rayan Cherki was noted for running at the listless red shirts and later sat on City\u2019s substitutes\u2019 bench wearing a Liverpool shirt.<\/p>\n
Arne Slot summed the evening in blunt terms: \u201cIt was just a game where both teams accepted it was 4\u20130 .\u201d Van Dijk added: \u201cWe let ourselves down, the manager down, but we let our fans down today,\u201d Van Dijk added. \u201cUp until the penalty, maybe not, but the way we especially played the second half, that must hurt for everyone, and it definitely hurts me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The captain did not confine his critique to the match. He questioned the current bond within the squad: \u201cI\u2019ve been lucky enough to play for Liverpool for so many years, the main thing that was always the thing was the togetherness,\u201d Van Dijk explained. \u201cAnd obviously we\u2019re in a little bit of a transition, so we have to find that, but it\u2019s still difficult to then perform each and every three days if we don\u2019t have it [the togetherness] consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pep Lijnders was in the opposing dugout on Saturday while filling in for the suspended Pep Guardiola. Van Dijk also invoked past standards, recalling the club\u2019s comeback against Barcelona and Mohamed Salah\u2019s message of \u201cNever give up.\u201d Looking ahead to the Champions League quarterfinal first leg, he warned: \u201cPSG is waiting for us,\u201d and added, \u201cI watched them yesterday a little bit, and they will be so tough again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk admitted Liverpool ‘gave up’ in 4\u20130 FA Cup loss to City and warned of fragile togetherness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1505,1006,1536],"class_list":["post-10866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-accountability","tag-captaincy","tag-champions-league-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}