The Reds were beaten on penalties by Crystal Palace in Sunday\u2019s annual fixture to usher in a new season, having twice led – through first-half goals from Hugo Ekitike and Jeremie Frimpong – but been pegged back to draw 2-2.<\/p>\n
Arne Slot\u2019s side will look to shake off the outcome in London as they begin the defence of their Premier League title by hosting AFC Bournemouth at Anfield on Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously mixed [emotions],\u201d said Van Dijk post-match. \u201cFirst of all, disappointed that we didn\u2019t win the Community Shield. That\u2019s what we came here for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were opportunities to do so, opportunities to avoid it as well. But the reality is today we\u2019re losing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the end of our pre-season today as well so we have to be ready now, work our socks off to be ready for Bournemouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The captain continued: \u201cWe all have plenty of experience, winning and losing. What kind of impact it should have is that we realise we need a couple of things that we have to improve as a team if we want to retain the title, which obviously will be a very big job in itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a recovery day tomorrow and then we fully focus on Bournemouth, which will be a very tough game. But I\u2019m really looking forward to the start of the Premier League.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriday at home with our fans, we know it\u2019s going to be emotional obviously with everything that is going on and happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m really looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the positive side for Liverpool on the afternoon were the debut goals for two of Slot\u2019s summer recruits in Ekitike and Frimpong.<\/p>\n
Asked about the former, who dispatched a classy low finish from the edge of the box to begin the scoring versus Palace, Van Dijk said: \u201cIt\u2019s never easy to come from a different country and I think he has settled in pretty well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith his goal it was good to see, it was important and hopefully many more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds were beaten on penalties by Crystal Palace in Sunday\u2019s annual fixture to usher in a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1050,1051,1039,1046,1041,1052,1054,1053,763,1045,1044,1040,1049,1042,1047,79,1043,16,15,1048],"class_list":{"0":"post-334642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-alisson","9":"tag-firmino","10":"tag-homepage","11":"tag-klopp","12":"tag-lfc","13":"tag-lfc-news","14":"tag-lfctv","15":"tag-lfctv-go","16":"tag-liverpool-fc","17":"tag-liverpool-fc-match","18":"tag-liverpool-fc-news","19":"tag-liverpool-football-club","20":"tag-mane","21":"tag-reds","22":"tag-salah","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-the-reds","25":"tag-uk","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-van-dijk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115007780528205198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}