Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk used a postmatch press conference to push back against mounting criticism after a nervy spell for the club. The Dutch defender, who spoke for two minutes and 10 seconds before adding \u201cSorry for the long answer.,\u201d said the noise around the team had become distracting.<\/p>\n
Five consecutive defeats to English opposition for the first time in 72 years had prompted alarm among fans, pundits and some players. A 2\u20130 victory at home to Aston Villa on Saturday night provided relief and left Van Dijk blunt about media reaction. \u201cEven in good times, you have to still keep going and don\u2019t take our foot off the gas,\u201d the Dutch skipper told TNT Sports. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve noticed over the last few weeks is that there\u2019s a lot of noise that you have no control over and we have to deal with that as a team. Some of the takes are ridiculous, but you deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk also acknowledged high-profile criticism can reach the squad, referencing comments such as Jamie Carragher\u2019s warning that it was \u201ccrisis time.\u201d \u201cOutside noise can reach certain players,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut we stick together. We are not going out on the pitch to lose games or leave fans disappointed, we want to work our socks off and win games. But it\u2019s not a guarantee, the Premier League is the highest level.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s time to start working, never get too high or too low. We live in a world where everyone can have their own opinions on so many platforms and they know better. We have to stay away from that and focus on the hard work we are doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast season, we did some negative stuff but everything was all sunshine and rainbows everywhere. Now it sounds like we\u2019re going to be in a relegation battle\u2014that\u2019s how it works in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The win moved Liverpool back up to third in the Premier League table. Mohamed Salah fired Liverpool in front at the end of a dominant first half and Ryan Gravenberch added a second in the 58th minute. Dominik Szoboszlai and Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 both missed clear chances.<\/p>\n
Manager Arne Slot urged caution despite the scoreline. \u201cThe margins are small every single game\u2014today after five minutes they hit the post,\u201d the Dutch boss fretted to Match of the Day. \u201cWe didn\u2019t concede a set piece, which was helpful, but also we got a bit lucky which hasn\u2019t happened recently. Our second goal was a deflection.\u201d He added: \u201cThe good thing about being 1\u20130 or 2\u20130 up [is] you can control the game a bit better with more possession, but if you are down you have to chase the game and take risks and get counter-attacked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk deflected critics after Liverpool’s 2\u20130 win over Aston Villa and called for calm focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[299,1006,1215],"class_list":["post-4208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-captaincy","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208","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=4208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}