Van Dijk “Pleased” With Liverpool’s Performance Against Rangers

Virgil Van Dijk, who finished Tuesday’s match with the captain’s armband, is happy to see Liverpool collect three points in a dominant performance. The centerback talked to Liverpoolfc.com about what this performance meant in the context of recent struggles:

Three points, overall a very good performance and a lot of things that we wanted to do came out. We created a lot of chances, I think their goalkeeper was outstanding, kept them in the game and yeah, I think overall it was very important to gain confidence and keep the clean sheet and do very well. I think we did.

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You know, when you are in a difficult moment everyone wants to sort the situation out as quickly as possible and that’s not always easy. You want to sort it like today or tomorrow and get everything as good as possible again because the consistency we showed over the last four or five years, that’s something that is the most difficult part in football and if you are not doing it right now then obviously you get the criticism that you deserve.

But it’s also a little bit that we set the standards so high that we know we are under some pressure. That’s why we have to stick together, be there for each other, work even harder and you see today great spirit in each and every one of us and [it was] a well-deserved win.

Naturally, Van Dijk was asked about Trent Alexander-Arnold, who scored a brilliant free kick to open the scoring:

Yeah, you know, that’s the outside world [discussing Alexander-Arnold]. Obviously the criticism we all got could have happened but for him he just had to keep his head down. He showed today his quality again and defensively he was there as well. Hopefully we can keep that line going, all of us, and keep clean sheets.

To close out the chat, Van Dijk was asked about the reception he might expect at Ibrox as a former Celtic player:

The last time I got booed was when I played England in Portugal in the Nations League semi-final and we won, so hopefully if that’s the case and we win then I will have it! But I don’t get affected by it, I try to play my best game and in order to do that the focus should be 100 per cent there. We know it’s going to be very tough over there with the fans so we have to be ready, but first we’ve got another big challenge coming up in the capital.

The Dutchman marks himself “pleased” with Liverpool’s performance Tuesday, which is something we can all agree with.