Liverpool suffered their first defeat of the 2025\/26 season, a 2-1 reverse at Selhurst Park to Crystal Palace, and captain Virgil van Dijk made clear the reaction must be immediate. The defeat, Van Dijk said, \u201call started\u201d with his side\u2019s errors and must not be allowed to take root.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m disappointed in the loss, but especially the way we went about it. I don\u2019t think there is any need to worry, but we have to improve quickly. It was the basics that we didn\u2019t do very well. Hopefully this is the only day this season we do that,\u201d Van Dijk said after the Selhurst Park setback.<\/p>\n
Van Dijk was equally blunt about Palace\u2019s approach and his own team\u2019s responsibility. \u201cThey are very difficult to break down. Very disciplined, they defend deep and they don\u2019t mind that. They have the quality on the break to hurt you. But it all started with ourselves. We were sloppy, and we were lucky we have the best goalkeeper in the world to save us,\u201d the Liverpool captain added. Van Dijk closed his assessment with a warning on the scoreboard: \u201cIf we got a draw, then it would have been one point too many for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss arrived against the backdrop of a Liverpool side that has repeatedly found late winners earlier in the campaign. In the first five games of the season, four goals arrived after the 90-minute mark, and the phrase \u201cSlottage time\u201d began to permeate. That late habit extended into cup competitions, with Van Dijk himself rescuing three points late against Atl\u00e9tico Madrid in the Champions League and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 snatching victory in the Carabao Cup.<\/p>\n
There is acknowledgement that Liverpool have not fully settled following a wave of new signings, but the situation echoes last season when early setbacks did not prevent a strong title run. Nottingham Forest shocked Liverpool at Anfield to hand Slot an early loss in his tenure, and yet Liverpool went on to win the league by a 10-point margin. The Dutch manager also is primed to become the fastest Liverpool boss to reach 100 points.<\/p>\n
Before the October international break Liverpool travel to Galatasaray in the Champions League and then face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk demands quick improvements after Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat at Selhurst Park. He calls to focus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[355,299,1091],"class_list":["post-3169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-alisson-becker","tag-arne-slot","tag-sloppiness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169","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=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}