Virgil van Dijk: Liverpool’s new-look central defence will take time to gel

Virgil van Dijk accepts it will take time to build a connection with new signings Jeremy Jacquet and Ronald Araujo after Liverpool’s central defence received a summer overhaul. Pic: Peter Byrne/PA Wire.

Virgil van Dijk accepts it will take time to build a connection with new signings Jeremy Jacquet and Ronald Araujo after Liverpool’s central defence received a summer overhaul.

The departure of Ibrahima Konate after an indifferent season in which he played the majority of games alongside Van Dijk in their disappointing Premier League title defence and ongoing fitness issues with Joe Gomez and Giovani Leoni meant the club had to act to improve an area of weakness.

A £60million deal for Jacquet was agreed at the end of the winter transfer window, but he immediately sustained a season-ending injury and so his first appearance for his new club was delayed until Sunday’s 2-0 friendly win over Como.

The 21-year-old put in an impressive 45-minute performance, scoring the second goal, before being replaced by former Barcelona captain Araujo, who arrived a week ago in a loan deal which could be made permanent and also looked good in his first outing.

Jacquet is set to start at Newcastle at the weekend and Van Dijk knows, for all their time on the training ground, it is only in matches they will be able to build a proper relationship.

“I won’t say it’s the only way, but games are totally different than training,” said the Netherlands captain.

“Jeremy’s English is, I would say, a bit better than Ronald’s, but at the end of the day we are all pretty good footballers, we can see and smell some moments on how to defend certain situations.

“But it’s pretty clear that you need to form a connection together and that takes a bit of time.

“That’s absolutely normal, but hopefully we can get that going as quickly as possible.”

The trip to St James’ Park will be the first test for new head coach Andoni Iraola as he tries to reinstate the higher-intensity football seen under Jurgen Klopp but lost in the two years Arne Slot was in charge.

Earlier in pre-season Iraola made the startling admission his players could not run for more than 30 minutes.

Dropping Dominik Szoboszlai into a deeper midfield role alongside Ryan Gravenberch to allow Florian Wirtz to play as a number 10 has helped the process, but Liverpool still look light in midfield and up front, where they will be without Mohamed Salah for the first time in nine years and Hugo Ekitike, still recovering from Achilles tendon surgery.

“What I see is that no team in world football can play full intensity for 90 minutes,” added Van Dijk.

“Obviously you’re going to have some moments where players get to a position where we’re going be a bit tired and then it’s down to us to make sure that we are compact and find the right moment to press again.

“Obviously everyone’s eager to go and to press and keep their intensity up, but it’s a team game and we need everyone together in order to be able to do that.

“That goes in phases through the game, but if you do that at the right time then you don’t need to run as much as we sometimes do.

“But it’s a process and we’re working on that. (Against Como) there was definitely improvement.”