Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk admitted the squad are letting their manager Arne Slot down and questioned whether everyone was taking responsibility for what he labelled “a mess.”
Van Dijk was one of many players in red who desperately struggled during a dismal 3–0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Saturday afternoon. Not for the first time this season, the cerebral skipper was tasked with facing the media in the aftermath of an underwhelming result, yet, he appeared to be particularly angry on this occasion.
“We are definitely letting him [Slot] down,” Van Dijk fumed, “but we’ve let ourselves down as well. You look at yourself first and then you help each other, you help each other get out of this mess because at the moment it is a mess—that’s just a fact.
“As the champions we can’t be in the situation we are in right now. What are we going to do about it? We’re going to try to turn it around and that’s the mentality everyone should have.”
Liverpool have lost half of their opening 12 Premier League games for just the second time in the competition’s 33-year history. The 2015–16 iteration of Chelsea are the only defending champions ever to have lost more league games at this point of a season than Slot’s side.
“You should be angry,” Van Dijk continued, clearly fitting that brief himself. “The main thing for me is that everyone has to take responsibility.”
It was put to Van Dijk whether his teammates were indeed following those orders. “I don’t know,” he unconvincingly replied.
“But you have to do that. It’s the main thing I want the boys to do. It’s not easy during difficult times but we have to do it if we want to get out of this.”
