‘Awful’ Van Dijk makes bizarre, impractical request of Liverpool teammates ‘asking for trouble’

“Everyone has to look in the mirror including myself,” said Virgil van Dijk after defeat to Brentford on Saturday. Truer words have never been spoken, and the Liverpool captain deserves credit for acknowledging the need for introspection rather than blaming those around him, as he can often be seen doing in the heat of battle.

But while he and his Reds teammates were indeed “asking for trouble” in the first 20 minutes against the Bees, we don’t quite know what Van Dijk expects them to do to in order to cut that problem out at source. The only solution is surely for them, specifically him, to defend better.

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Van Dijk didn’t think his foul on Dango Ouattara for Brentford’s penalty met the ‘clear and obvious’ benchmark, but his lazy kick out at the Brentford forward seen as ‘confirmation of his decline into Dejan Lovren’ in what has been a difficult couple of games for the centre-back.

Joe Cole described his and Ibrahima Konate’s defending for Kevin Schade’s goal, for which Mikkel Damsgaard sliced through Liverpool with one – admittedly wonderful – pass to send the German through one-on-one with Giorgi Mamardashvili, as “awful”. And for much of the second half, with Liverpool chasing the game, Van Dijk appeared to lose all sense of defensive responsibility in desperation to be the man to drag them back into it.

“Conceding three goals is far too much if you want to win a game of football,” manager Arne Slot said after the game.

“First one was a set-piece. Second is a counter-attack which is one of the things [Brentford] are really good at.

“We didn’t defend that at all. To be in the game at half-time because we scored and in the second half, the penalty made it impossible to get a result today.”

Not defending the problem. Slot spoke about his side’s issues in dealing with “the ball in the air” having forgotten entirely how Chelsea beat them at their own game before the international break, but Schade’s goal very clearly illustrated their all-round fallibility at the back.

Asked for his assessment of the goals they conceded, Van Dijk picked out Outtara’s opener, which saw him finish on the volley at the back post after Michael Kayode’s long throw was flicked on, as particularly disappointing after that was a focus of their training in the build-up.

But part of that frustration being around Liverpool’s concession of throw-ins strikes us as odd.

“Obviously, a disappointing night,” the Liverpool captain said to reporters at the Gtech. “We conceded two goals again in the first half, in what we obviously trained on as well, because their throw-in are obviously very dangerous.

“I think the first one we defended well, but we gave them opportunity after opportunity after that to put it back in.

“I think we gave maybe 10 throw-ins away in the first 20 minutes. And if that’s the strength of the opponent, then obviously you’re asking for trouble. So, it’s disappointing, but more disappointing that obviously we can’t keep a clean sheet at the moment.”

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Kayode’s throw-in was some 25 yards from the corner flag. And part of the huge attraction in making it such a menacing weapon is how hard it is for opposition teams to avoid conceding throw-ins.

Free-kicks and corners we get. Not committing fouls and preventing teams from progressing to the point where they can win a corner is a reasonable ask. But short of not booting the ball out of play unnecessarily, which Liverpool players didn’t and won’t do, we’re not quite sure what Van Dijk is asking here.

Is a Brentford throw-in so dangerous that he would actually prefer their winger retained possession in the final third rather than being tackled on the touchline? Will we see players in red rushing and sliding to kick the ball out for a corner rather in order to avoid the potential disaster that is a throw-in?

As Van Dijk said, it’s “more disappointing that we can’t keep a clean sheet”, and the way to do that is to learn how to defend those throw-ins, not prevent the inevitable concession of them, because that’s a bizarre, impractical request to make of anyone in a game of football.