Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk has identified set-piece weakness as a decisive factor in the club\u2019s faltering defence of the Premier League title. A close-range finish from Santiago Bueno on Saturday was the 12th goal Liverpool have conceded from a set piece this season, a tally that tops England\u2019s top flight. By contrast, the club conceded nine such goals across the entire 2024\u201325 campaign. Liverpool have scored just three times from set pieces in the current campaign, leaving them with a set-piece goal difference of -9, the worst in the division.<\/p>\n
Van Dijk addressed the issue straight after the match. \u201cThere have been plenty of games when we have defended them very well. But the fact is we\u2019ve conceded too many set-piece goals and we don\u2019t score enough,\u201d he sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something we have to improve. I would say at least 75% of the time or even more, it\u2019s not even about the first contact. It\u2019s the second phase that is the killer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it a mental thing? I hope not. If that\u2019s in your head then it\u2019s an issue. Personally, it\u2019s not in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
The captain expanded on the work being done to address the problem. \u201cWe have defended so many set pieces very well,\u201d the Dutch defender somehow claimed. \u201cBut we\u2019ve conceded too many goals like that and it hurts. We have to improve that. Training is the only way to get better at it. It\u2019s not been good enough. We all realise that. We have spoken about it. We need to turn it around. That\u2019s why we work on it almost every training session.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manager Arne Slot echoed the frustration while offering a small positive. \u201cUnfortunately we\u2019re maybe the only team that hardly ever scores from a set piece and, even worse, we constantly concede.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then, I think I said two, three or four weeks ago, we have to make sure that when things go against us\u2014it could be a set piece, it could be other things\u2014we still need to find a way to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last two games we conceded from a set piece but we were able to win and that hasn\u2019t happened many times this season. That\u2019s progress for me, but it\u2019s obvious there are more things for us to improve and this is definitely one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have been unlucky in multiple situations in our set pieces. It is 18 games now and we need to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a statistical caveat: Liverpool\u2019s expected goals from set pieces stands at 5.9, the eighth-best figure, per Opta. Stats via WhoScored. Correct as of Dec. 28, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk: set-piece record has hurt Liverpool \u2014 12 conceded, 3 scored and worst goal difference. Dec<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1006],"class_list":["post-5466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-captaincy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466","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=5466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}