Arne Slot has urged Virgil van Dijk to view criticism as a reflection of the standards he has set at Liverpool, following a public exchange with Wayne Rooney. Rooney has since walked back his comments, admitting he may have been out of line.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sky Sports, Slot was unequivocal in defending Van Dijk\u2019s standing in the dressing room and his influence at the training ground. He told the broadcaster that doubts about the defender\u2019s leadership were misplaced and that Van Dijk\u2019s presence is apparent from the first moments of training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve picked captains at my former clubs where the age of the players were much younger,\u201d Slot proclaimed. \u201cMaybe not completely because they were already the leader of the team, but I\u2019m hoping that could help them to become a leader of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut with Virgil, it\u2019s so clear that he\u2019s the leader of this team. When you walk through the AXA [training centre], when we start the training session, you can hear him, you can feel he\u2019s our leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s already been so important for this club for so many years, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had many captains that were so vocal, so loud as he is. He\u2019s been a very good captain for me and since he became the captain of this club.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe sets the bar at 10 out of 10 and when he has a nine out of 10 [performance], he sometimes gets criticised as well… I think other players will get compliments for a nine out of 10, but he gets criticised for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had similar form to last season, but there were one or two moments this season where he could have done better defensively and he got criticised by that straightaway. Maybe he should it see as a compliment, because that\u2019s where he set the bar from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot\u2019s point was straightforward: Van Dijk\u2019s status brings scrutiny, but that scrutiny is also an acknowledgment of the level he occupies within the squad. Rooney had a similar message for Van Dijk, admitting that his \u201cunfair\u201d criticism was to be expected because of the defender\u2019s status as an elite player, challenging him to use the comments as inspiration to improve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot urges Van Dijk to treat criticism as a compliment after the public exchange with Rooney on Sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[299,1006,1215],"class_list":["post-4330","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\/4330","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=4330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}