Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk moved to close down suggestions of a fractured squad and questions over Arne Slot\u2019s suitability at the club. He described speculation on social media about a possible dressing-room divide as wide of the mark and said the team is focused on its work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho gives him the disrespect? That\u2019s the question,\u201d he responded. \u201cIs the disrespect being given by people that we shouldn\u2019t value their disrespect?<\/p>\n
\u201cI can also think about players being disrespected and who disrespects the players? Is that someone you value, is it a significant show of disrespect or someone you can just let slide and instead just focus on the task ahead to be successful as a Liverpool player? That\u2019s the responsibility we speak about every three or four days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Dijk accepted that Liverpool\u2019s drop-off from last season has invited criticism, but he denied there is internal disharmony.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe matter of fact is we are Premier League champions and we have not been good enough on a consistent basis,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s just a fact. The criticism comes and that\u2019s something we just have to accept. We just have to keep going.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there has been any question about [togetherness] internally. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any disharmony. There are obviously challenges that happen and everyone is dealing with certain situations in a different way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also about dealing with it together and how we are going to fix it and change things around.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something that makes you stronger as a team and if you come out of it like we should do\u2014hopefully, as we have the quality\u2014then I think it can only improve you as a team and as a player as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
On paper Liverpool have suffered just one defeat in their last 12 Premier League games, but that run includes only five victories and six draws, four of which came in a row to start 2026. A 6\u20130 win over Qaraba\u011f in the Champions League and a 4\u20131 victory against Newcastle United have helped morale. A stern test arrives on Saturday with Manchester City and Pep Guardiola visiting Anfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk rejects claims of a dressing-room split at Liverpool and defends Arne Slot and squad unity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[299,1006,1047],"class_list":["post-6504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-arne-slot","tag-captaincy","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504","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=6504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}