Virgil van Dijk confirmed he convened a players-only meeting after Liverpool\u2019s damaging home loss to Manchester United, a defeat that completed a run of four consecutive losses in all competitions and left the club further adrift of Arsenal and Manchester City.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old, who scored in the subsequent 5\u20131 Champions League victory over Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday evening, said the squad gathered at the start of the week to address the mood in the camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Monday, everyone was sad because we lost to Manchester United at home,\u201d said Van Dijk, who scored in the win at Frankfurt. \u201cWe haven\u2019t lost many games at home during my time at Liverpool. It was tough under the circumstances, so on Monday we came together, but it wasn\u2019t a crisis meeting. We all know how things can change. We\u2019re only in October.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants to lose four games in a row, but it was the situation we faced. We had to stay calm and block out all the noise from the outside because that\u2019s something you can\u2019t control. The only way to get out of a situation like that is to stay together, keep your mind on the task ahead, try to improve, keep the confidence, embrace the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk described the players\u2019 meeting as a complement to the manager\u2019s debrief rather than a replacement for it. \u201cBefore my meeting yes [the mood was low} but after my meeting everyone was happy,\u201d added the 34-year-old. \u201cWe had a proper debrief with the manager, but we also had a separate one as players. I wanted to say some things. It\u2019s not something I do after every game. Let\u2019s keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The intervention preceded a comprehensive response from Arne Slot\u2019s side in Europe, where the team overturned the recent domestic setbacks with a decisive win in the Champions League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk led a players-only meeting after Liverpool’s fourth straight loss then scored in Frankfurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[299,1006,1047],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-captaincy","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","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=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}