{"id":336139,"date":"2025-08-11T16:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/336139\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T16:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:17:11","slug":"van-dijk-wants-liverpool-to-tighten-up-and-backs-club-to-sign-reinforcements-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/336139\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Dijk wants Liverpool to tighten up and backs club to sign reinforcements | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virgil van Dijk has acknowledged that Liverpool<\/a> must improve \u00addefensively to retain the Premier League title, and backed the club to bring in more\u00a0\u00adreinforcements before the end of the transfer window.<\/p>\n

Van Dijk revealed after the Community Shield on Sunday that he had spent the previous five days in bed with a virus. The defender was culpable for Palace\u2019s first equaliser in the 2-2 draw<\/a> when he brought down Isma\u00efla Sarr for a \u00adpenalty and Liverpool\u2019s defence struggled to contain the Senegal forward, who scored his team\u2019s second to take the game to a shootout won by Palace.<\/p>\n

Aside from a 5-0 win against Stoke last month behind closed doors, Liver\u00adpool have conceded in all of their pre-season matches and their captain admitted that must be resolved before the opening league fixture at home against Bournemouth on Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was that simple, I would have told you immediately and we would have fixed it,\u201d Van Dijk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s a combination. You defend as a team, you press as a team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many chances we give away [against Palace], but I think there\u2019s still maybe a handful in total. But the fact is that we conceded every game, apart from Stoke. That\u2019s something we have to work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not worried whatsoever, because there\u2019s also a reason why we\u2019re very defensively good last year. We have to get back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite an impressive performance from Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 (right) against Crystal Palace, Liverpool are expected to make another attempt to sign Newcastle\u2019s Alexander Isak. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ryan Gravenberch missed the Community Shield because his partner gave birth on Saturday night and he is suspended for the Bournemouth game after being sent off against Palace<\/a> on the final day of last season.<\/p>\n

Curtis Jones dropped into the Dutchman\u2019s usual position in central midfield on Sunday and could retain his place, along with the new full\u2011backs Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez. Liverpool are \u00adinterested in signing Marc Gu\u00e9hi, but have yet to match Palace\u2019s \u00a340m valuation for their captain, who has entered the final year of his contract.<\/p>\n

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Despite an impressive performance from Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 against Palace, Liverpool are also expected to make another attempt to sign Alexander Isak from Newcastle after selling Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez to Al-Hilal<\/a> last week. Liverpool have also sold Luis D\u00edaz to Bayern Munich<\/a>. The Portugal forward Diogo Jota died in a car crash<\/a> last month. They have spent nearly \u00a3300m on players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fully trusting the club to do the right thing,\u201d Van Dijk said. \u201cWhat they think is good for the club, we\u2019ll see in the next couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liverpool ended their last title defence, under J\u00fcrgen Klopp in 2020-21, third, 17 points behind the champions, Manchester City. \u201cIt was quite tough the year after we won it,\u201d Van Dijk said. \u201cWe have to put it in our minds that whatever happened last season, happened last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a team, as a club, it was always going to be a tough season, especially with everything that happened over the summer as well. But the only way to overcome this is to do it together as a collective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virgil van Dijk has acknowledged that Liverpool must improve \u00addefensively to retain the Premier League title, and backed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-336139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115011036505646239","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336139","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=336139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}