VAN DIJK IS NOT TOO FAT, INSISTS KLOPP
LIVERPOOL manager Jurgen Klopp has insisted Virgil van Dijk does not need to lose weight or become fitter, after the club’s former defender Jamie Carragher suggested he should do both.
Van Dijk is still adjusting after his £75million move from Southampton at the start of the transfer window and Klopp admitted the 26-year-old is unfamiliar with the high defensive line Liverpool play and is also still recovering from long-term injury.
Carragher suggested on a Sky Sports debate on Thursday night that the player ‘needs to get fit and lose a bit of weight’, adding: ‘He actually looks too big.’
Klopp said: ‘Wow! I’m sure Jamie could lose a little bit of weight. I know it’s not the case for Virgil. He’s a big, tall lad that’s how it is. We have the best nutrition department — no one has come to me and said that.’
Having been kept on the bench in midweek at Huddersfield, Van Dijk is needed against Tottenham tomorrow as Liverpool seek to avenge their 4- 1 humbling at Wembley in October.
Successive defeats at Swansea and at home to West Bromwich in the FA Cup in Van Dijk’s last two starts suggest it may take time before Liverpool reap the rewards of their world-record outlay for a defender. He will take time adjusting to the defensive line, too, the manager admitted.
‘ It’s much higher,’ Klopp explained. ‘Of course — much higher. Giving him all the information is what will happen but step by step and not, “Here is the Liverpool book, read it and then you should be ready for it”. That is not how it is. All of the information goes here (pointing to his head), but he needs to play from here (pointing to his feet). That means it takes a little bit of time.’
Keeping Van Dijk on the bench at Huddersfield was a ‘ purely physical thing’, Klopp added. ‘When he came here he was not 100 per cent match fit because he had a long (ankle) injury. He played, then was not fit — and I don’t know him well enough to say, “Yes you can play every three days in this period”.’
There is a strong argument that the inflexibility of Liverpool’s defensive line is the problem. It certainly looked like it that day at Wembley, with apparently no tactical preparation to deal with Harry Kane.
‘You cannot use that day to talk about a mistake,’ Klopp insisted. ‘You need to make (the mistake) more often to think it’s a real problem. It’s not a problem.’
Klopp’s third-placed side have conceded more than any other top-seven team bar Arsenal, but he aspires to a runners-up spot at the very least.
‘I would prefer to be second, to be honest, if you cannot be first,’ said the manager, who is likely to be without Adam Lallana against Spurs because of a muscular injury. Klopp’s opposite number Mauricio Pochettino, meanwhile, believes Tottenham’s awful away record against the Premier League’s big six is largely why the title continues to elude the north London club.
Under the Argentine, Spurs have won only once in 18 attempts on the road against their direct rivals — and that was two years ago this month at Manchester City. It is a statistic that irritates Pochettino.
‘That is why maybe we miss a title, why we don’t win the Premier League,’ he said. ‘Maybe because we are the younger team in the Premier League, maybe we need time to mature. There are many reasons why this happens.
‘In 19 games away from home in the top six, there have been only four victories for the teams away. For everyone, it is a problem.
‘In the end it is how you finish in the table. We finished second last season, third the season before. Of course, if we won more games away from home, I’m sure we would win the title, but we miss something to achieve that.’
One man set to be missing at Anfield is Tottenham’s £25million signing Lucas Moura. The Brazilian was in Paris yesterday for ‘private’ matters and is yet to train with the squad.