Virgil van Dijk Q&A: How Brighton were beaten, 'aggressive' Liverpool and Jacquet partnership
Virgil van Dijk took satisfaction from a hard-earned clean sheet as Liverpool saw off Brighton & Hove Albion 2-0 on Sunday.
The Reds increased their winning streak to four games, overcoming the in-form Seagulls at Anfield courtesy of a Pascal Gross own goal and Alexander Isak’s strike during the first half.
Post-match, captain Van Dijk reflected on the Premier League contest when speaking to Stadium Astro. Read his verdict in full below.
On a first home league win of the season…
It’s great for all of us. And especially against Brighton, that’s obviously high-flying, they are full of confidence. Well deserved – what a start they had to the season. They make it very uncomfortable for each team. The message was we had to go a bit more direct. It doesn’t maybe look the most beautiful way of playing football but you get a lot of joy, in my opinion, against them with that. That’s what we showed, especially the first half an hour, I would say.
On the ‘aggressive’ nature of Liverpool’s defending…
Especially Ronald [Araujo], he was very aggressive in the right moments at the right time. That’s what we need. You see it with the crowd – the crowd loves it and that energy can transcend to the team. It was great to get the clean sheet. Hard work for it, of course, because if you look at Brighton they scored so many goals. And they only conceded a couple. So it was important for us to keep that clean sheet and be ready on the break – and that’s what we did.
On it being the idea to bypass Brighton’s press…
Yeah, because you could see it in the goal-kicks – [Lewis] Dunk followed all the way through with [Florian] Wirtz. If you’re then trying to be clever and find the free man and show that you’re very good football players then you can get punished. That’s what happened to a lot of teams I think against them this season. If you go direct – which we also did last year, by the way – you could have a bit more joy. That’s what we did, especially the first half an hour, and we scored two goals out of that as well.
On enjoying playing next to Jeremy Jacquet and how quickly he has adapted…
Definitely. He’s a fantastic player and he has got so much more to come. So, it’s very exciting for Liverpool. It’s down to him to keep working, keep learning from situations in games – good and lesser-good moments – and keep level-headed.
On how Jacquet complements him…
I said at the start of the season before we played our first game: we need to get to know each other in a way of what both of us are doing in certain situations. So, when he is going for a challenge, when he has the ball. You get to know each other in so many moments. It just takes a bit of time, but I think so far we have been doing pretty well. And on to much more.
