Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk issued a stark assessment after his side dropped points at Anfield, warning that continued carelessness will make the fight for Champions League qualification much harder. The Reds dominated territory and possession but still conceded, with Marcus Edwards levelling in the 65th minute.<\/p>\n
Burnley centre back Bashir Humphreys also chipped in with two saves of his own, clearing a pair of goal-bound efforts from Cody Gakpo off the line in the second half. Earlier in the move that led to the equaliser, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 inadvertently fired towards his own goal; Alisson produced a superb reaction stop to prevent a strike on that occasion but could not get a glove on Edwards\u2019s crisp finish three minutes later.<\/p>\n
Van Dijk was critical of his team rather than rivals after the draw, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t look at the rest, we have to just look at ourselves,\u201d the 34-year-old told assembled reporters in the Anfield mixed zone post-match, as quoted by the BBC. \u201cIf we play like we did even by creating chances in the last of half an hour today, yeah,\u201d he said with a deep sigh, \u201cthen it will be very difficult, so we have to improve ourselves first and foremost instead of looking at the others.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result was compounded by wins for Manchester United and Chelsea on the same day. Liverpool remain fourth on 36 points with a +4 goal difference and sit three points above Sunderland in ninth. Correct as of Jan. 18, 2026. Top five teams are on course to qualify for 2026\u201327 Champions League.<\/p>\n
Frustration was plain in Van Dijk\u2019s words. \u201cFrustration is the word which is definitely in my head,\u201d Van Dijk seethed. \u201cAfter 60 minutes, we started to become sloppy and it\u2019s not the first time. We have to address that. It\u2019s been spoken about already but we have to address it again\u2014apparently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to a Champions League trip to Marseille, he added: \u201cMonday will be a big one for it [the team talk] because Wednesday will be a very difficult game over there, not only because of the atmosphere but it\u2019s against a [Roberto] De Zerbi team that makes it very difficult for you.\u201d Van Dijk admitted uncertainty over the problem: \u201cIf I had a solution we wouldn\u2019t be having these conversations.\u201d On the Anfield reaction, he said: \u201cI don\u2019t like boos, from my own fans, what can I say?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk warned Liverpool\u2019s sloppiness risks their Champions League place after a draw with Burnley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,175,969],"tags":[355,1047,872],"class_list":["post-6053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-burnley","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-alisson-becker","tag-champions-league","tag-cody-gakpo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053","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=6053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}