Manchester City can extend their lead to nine points if they defeat Brentford later on Wednesday.
Chelsea can potentially jump Liverpool into second place if they beat Brighton on Wednesday, albeit the Reds will have a game in hand. Despite Ademola Lookman’s goal being Leicester’s sole attempt on target after Mohamed Salah missed a first-half penalty for Liverpool, Van Dijk made no excuses for the setback on Tuesday.
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Liverpool, who have not scored in 29 league games, will attempt to reclaim the lead against Chelsea on Sunday. Van Dijk, on the other hand, believes the players must consider why they underperformed against a Leicester side that was defeated 6-3 by Manchester City at the weekend.
“Everyone has to improve by looking in the mirror,” the Dutch defender told Amazon Prime. Van Dijk, on the other hand, stated categorically that it was not the case. However, Van Dijk said it was no time to give up hope as other factors may still play a role in who is crowned champion.
“We’re in December. The season is so, so long,” he said. “You have seen it with Covid and injuries — lots of things can change. There’s no point looking at (Manchester) City or Chelsea or the other teams around us. We should look at our performance today and improve.”
Liverpool will also have to cope without Salah and another key player, Sadio Mane, for what could be as long as a month with both heading off for the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon after Sunday’s match. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, though, is more concerned that his side rediscover their brio for the Chelsea match.
“It’s a big gap,” Klopp told the BBC. “To top that, Chelsea and us play against each other. “It was not our plan to give City the chance to run away.”If we play like tonight we cannot think about catching up with City.
“Klopp was bemused by the under-par performance and said finding an answer to that conundrum was his priority.”If we play our football and we can win games, we can see how many points we can get and what that means,” the German said.
“I don’t have a proper explanation for tonight — to find it is my main concern, not City.” It didn’t look like us, and that’s obviously the one thing we have to think about and change immediately. We have to learn and we will.”© 2021 AFP