The long-standing rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United has spilled into the public sphere with a forthright exchange between Virgil van Dijk and Wayne Rooney. The disagreement began after an underwhelming 3\u20132 defeat to Brentford, when voices inside Liverpool\u2019s squad and external pundits criticised the champions.<\/p>\n
Rooney, an ex-Everton academy graduate and former England captain, questioned the influence of Liverpool\u2019s senior stars on and off the pitch. \u201cThey\u2019ve signed new deals but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve really led that team this season,\u201d Rooney claimed. \u201cI think body language tells you a lot, and I think we\u2019re seeing slightly different body language from the two of them. They are the top two players in that team and if their body language is not right, that affects everyone else.<\/p>\n
\u201cI might be wrong on this, but if I was a Liverpool fan or the manager, that would be a big concern for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk has been publicly stung by those remarks. After watching from the stands as Liverpool lost their fifth successive domestic fixture against Crystal Palace last Wednesday, he had little opportunity to respond immediately. A win over Aston Villa on Saturday provided a platform for a fuller reply.<\/p>\n
Having initially called for calm and pushing back against what he described as \u201cridiculous takes,\u201d Van Dijk singled out Rooney by name. \u201cI didn\u2019t hear him last year,\u201d the Premier League champion snapped. \u201cNo, it doesn\u2019t hurt me to be honest. Just to come back to this particular player, obviously a legend, a big player of the game who inspired so many, I can say only positive things, but I feel that comment is just… I would say it\u2019s a bit of a lazy criticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my personal opinion. It\u2019s easy to blame the older players but he knows obviously as well as everyone else we do it together trying to help each and every one of us to try to get out of this and, like I said as well, last year when things go well you don\u2019t hear that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk also added: \u201cThere\u2019s no hard feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rooney remained firm. \u201cMy job now as a pundit is to give my opinions on what I feel,\u201d he told his own podcast from a dimly lit trophy room. \u201cI\u2019m sure if you ask him or Arne Slot, he probably hasn\u2019t been as good as he has been over the last few years. That was my comment which I stick by.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A public back-and-forth between Virgil van Dijk and Wayne Rooney follows criticism after Liverpool\u2019s poor run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,179,172],"tags":[299,1006,1215],"class_list":["post-4234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-captaincy","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234","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=4234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}