Virgil van Dijk has expressed his frustration over ‘a number of factors’ which contributed to a difficult season for Liverpool.
The Reds missed out on Champions League qualification for the first time since the Dutchman’s move to Anfield in January 2018, with the defender also admitting that the staging of the World Cup in the winter didn’t help matters.
The 31-year-old was speaking with Algemeen Dagblad when he spoke candidly about the campaign that the Merseysiders endured, trying to offer explanations as to why they fell short of the standards they’ve set in previous years.
Van Dijk said: “Last season, there were a number of factors that added up to making things more difficult. The World Cup in Qatar, for example, in the middle of the season. We had to deal with injuries, with form that just wasn’t there in many matches.
“As a result, you start playing inconsistently and that is frustrating. We won 7-0 against Manchester United, then you think you are over it, but a few days later we lost 1-0 at Bournemouth.”
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Firstly, the unique staging of a World Cup in the middle of a season, which left participating players with 10 months of near-constant football to manage, is something we hopefully will never see again.
Van Dijk is right in saying that injuries to key players didn’t help Liverpool’s cause either, although it’s a bugbear with which every Premier League manager needs to deal.
As for the Reds’ inconsistency throughout the season, the two results highlighted by the Dutchman put the campaign in microcosm.
To go from an unforgettable thrashing of their arch-rivals to an insipid defeat away to a team in the bottom half of the table (who frankly wanted it more) in the space of six days illustrates why Anfield won’t stage Champions League football in 2023/24.
Van Dijk won’t quite get a break just yet as he’s representing Netherlands in the UEFA Nations League finals this week, but then will come a period of rest that he and his clubmates very much need.
This summer is the time for Liverpool’s squad to press the reset button after numerous hectic months and come back fresher to attack the new campaign with renewed hunger as they seek to get back to competing for major silverware under Jurgen Klopp.