Virgil van Dijk has responded after Liverpool suffered only their second defeat of the season when losing to Arsenal on Sunday
Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool
Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool(Image: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
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Virgil van Dijk believes Liverpool should forget about title challengers Manchester City and Arsenal as they continue to navigate a transition in style under new head coach Andoni Iraola.
The Reds suffered only their second defeat in 14 games under Iraola when they went down 1-0 at home to defending Premier League champions Arsenal in controversial fashion on Sunday.
The result has left Liverpool six points adrift of second-placed City - the only other team to beat Iraola's side this season - and a whopping nine behind leaders Arsenal.
But Van Dijk is adamant the concentration for the squad must purely be on continuing to adapt and improve to the methods of the head coach.
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"We have to just focus on ourselves," said the Liverpool captain. "I don't think it is good to think about the other two and even Brighton. We have to focus on ourselves and we are in a process.
"We have been together now for four months but we play at Liverpool and we want results every three days, especially at home.
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"The main thing is we keep working very hard and that we see improvement, but the matter of fact is we are in a transition. (Arsenal) was a great opportunity to get a good result, but unfortunately it didn't happen, so we have to take it."
Van Dijk added: "We should not lower our standards. We obviously troubled the champions, but we played at home, and we wanted to win. We had opportunities to score, but in the end, we come away with nothing. That is frustrating and we are all disappointed.
"It is still a work in progress. We are training a lot but eventually it is about doing it in the games. There were a lot of good things, by the way, but you need results and we didn't get the result that we wanted."
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Liverpool will look to respond when they take on Fenerbahce in Istanbul on Wednesday evening aiming to extend the 100% start to their Champions League campaign.
Van Dijk spoke last week about the team taking more risks with their play to pursue greater reward, and accepts there will inevitably be occasional setbacks with that approach after the Reds conceded the only goal against Arsenal when attempting to play out from the back.
"For sure," he said. "We can see in the first half that I was going to press (Martin) Odegaard and he was never going to get the ball. The outlet for them was a long ball to (Noni) Madueke against Milos (Kerkez) and then play the second ball from there.
"That is what teams are going to try and do, and we prepared for it. That's how the games are now being played - finding a situation where you can hurt the opponent and we try to do that and opponents try to do that as well.
"I was happy with the reaction after the goal we conceded. We absolutely tried everything and we could have done even better in the last 15 minutes, going a bit more direct and getting more crosses in."
Van Dijk added: "When you are playing against an Arsenal team that is very good and defensively structured, the gaps are so short. You see (Kai) Havertz almost being a number six in front of their defence at times.
"That is how hard they work, and it is difficult to find those moments. You need a bit of luck at set-pieces at times. We had small opportunities, but unfortunately it wasn't enough."