Done deal Virgil van Dijk is out of form and his performance have come under scrutiny during a difficult season for Liverpool and his contract was ended

Done deal Virgil van Dijk is out of form and his performance have come under scrutiny during a difficult season for Liverpool and his contract was ended

Virgil van Dijk’s performances have come under scrutiny during a difficult season for Liverpool; 

Virgil van Dijk’s poor performance in Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last weekend put him back under the spotlight and reignited the debate around his form.

The centre-back was partly at fault for both Arsenal goals, clumsily diverting Martin Odegaard’s pass to Gabriel Martinelli for the opener, and then losing Gabriel Jesus in the Liverpool box for the second.

His error-prone display was just the latest in a long line of them this season but what is behind his struggles? And do they represent a temporary dip in form, or are they evidence of a decline?

Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher leapt to his defence in the aftermath of the game, arguing that Van Dijk is a “far better” defender than Nemanja Vidic and describing him as “the best player in the league” along with Kevin De Bruyne over the last four seasons.

Carragher added that Van Dijk’s impact at Liverpool was the most profound by any centre-back in Premier League history and insisted the 31-year-old is simply having a “poor season” in his career, “like all players”, including Rio Ferdinand and John Terry.

Certainly, there can be no doubting Van Dijk’s impact following his £75m arrival at Liverpool from Southampton during the 2017/18 campaign. The next two years brought Champions League and Premier League glory. Van Dijk was key to the transformation.

He finished second only to Lionel Messi in the Ballon d’Or voting in 2019 and has been included in the PFA Team of the Year in three of the last four seasons, the only exception being the 2020/21 campaign, when a cruciate knee injury limited his involvement.

There are problems all over the pitch for Jurgen Klopp and most of them stem from a significant collective drop in physical intensity.

After the gruelling efforts of last season, and with the profile of their squad ageing, the ferocious pressing that underpinned Liverpool’s previous success under Klopp has only been seen in patches.

As a result, a side that ranked top in the Premier League in most metrics related to pressing last season have seen their numbers slump dramatically in the current campaign.

According to Opta, Liverpool are registering fewer pressed sequences and forcing fewer high turnovers, their numbers dropping from 20.2 and 11.7 per game to 16.1 and 9.4 per game respectively.

Their average for opposition passes allowed per defensive action, a metric which measures the frequency with which a side attempt to disrupt their opponents’ passing sequences, has changed even more starkly, from just 9.9 last season to 11.4 now.