Virgil van Dijk Admits Liverpool Have Left Themselves in a Tricky Position in Champions League

Virgil van Dijk has admitted that Liverpool's defeat to Napoli in the last matchround of the Champions League has put them in a situation where all four of their remaining matches are 'must win' ties. 

The Reds face Crvena Zvezda at Anfield on Wednesday night, their opponents looking to bounce back after being hammered 6-1 by Paris Saint-Germain in the last round of matches – a match reportedly being investigated for match fixing after suspicious betting activity. 

Quoted by the Mirror ahead of Wednesday night's match, Liverpool defender Van Dijk said: “We need to respect the opponent. They are in the Champions League - the best competition in Europe apart from the Premier League - and it will be a hard game. We will need to be 100 per cent and I think we will be.

“Against Huddersfield, we should have done even better. Obviously we kept a clean sheet, which is all good, but we could have made it easier for ourselves. We need to win every game. There is basically no other mindset. It’s another Champions League night at Anfield and I’m sure we will recover from Huddersfield and make sure we are ready.”

Van Dijk also congratulated his teammate Mohamed Salah on breaking a short goalscoring drought against Huddersfield on the weekend, but admitted that the whole team need to work hard to get back to their collective attacking form from last season. 

“We will try to score more goals,” he said. “I think everyone is giving their all. Obviously we have things to improve up front and also at the back. It was important for everyone to score, but, of course, it was good for him to score. I was very happy for him. But I wasn’t in any doubt that he would score again because he’s such a good player.”