{"id":751322,"date":"2026-02-08T21:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/751322\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T21:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:02:19","slug":"virgil-van-dijk-assesses-liverpools-defeat-by-manchester-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/751322\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgil van Dijk assesses Liverpool&#8217;s defeat by Manchester City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>On his feelings about the game\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>First half I think they were much more comfortable on the ball. We were obviously trying to be more direct, trying to put the problem on their half\u2026 because we knew they were looking to get it to our right side and go from there. And I think we weren\u2019t good enough in the first half. Second half I think we were much better, much more dominance on the ball as well at times, and obviously score a worldie of a free-kick.<\/p>\n<p>I think then obviously they will come out more and press even more than they [usually] do and [they] score the equaliser. I think between the equaliser and penalty moment both teams tried to \u2013 in my opinion right now, others maybe have a different opinion \u2013 go for the winner, and the penalty moment decides the game. That\u2019s the feeling I am having.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On whether he felt Liverpool were in \u2018complete control\u2019 after Szoboszlai\u2019s goal\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You are never in complete control against City and especially when City is 1-0 down, they will come and press you even more, they get subs on, they make more runs. If you see how they play, obviously they play with sort of a 4-4-2 with a diamond in the middle so you have to communicate well. When [Antoine] Semenyo is coming in the middle, Milos [Kerkez] has to follow or a midfielder has to take him, so you are never comfortable and you always have to be on your toes I think. Like I said, my feeling at the moment \u2013 and maybe I am wrong \u2013 is that after the equaliser we were both trying everything to try to score the winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On his feelings about the game\u2026 First half I think they were much more comfortable on the ball.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[1050,748,393,1051,4884,1039,1046,1041,1052,1054,1053,763,1045,1044,1040,2465,1049,1042,1047,1043,16,15,1048],"class_list":{"0":"post-751322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-alisson","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-firmino","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-homepage","14":"tag-klopp","15":"tag-lfc","16":"tag-lfc-news","17":"tag-lfctv","18":"tag-lfctv-go","19":"tag-liverpool-fc","20":"tag-liverpool-fc-match","21":"tag-liverpool-fc-news","22":"tag-liverpool-football-club","23":"tag-manchester","24":"tag-mane","25":"tag-reds","26":"tag-salah","27":"tag-the-reds","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-van-dijk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116037036315610880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751322","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=751322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}