Virgil van Dijk tells Liverpool ‘job is not done’ in Premier League

Virgil van Dijk has warned his Liverpool teammates they should not think winning the Premier League is a foregone conclusion after Champions League elimination and losing the Carabao Cup final. Liverpool are 12 points clear with nine matches remaining as they seek to win one trophy this season. They lost meekly 2-1 against Newcastle at Wembley on Sunday to compound a frustrating few days after they were knocked out of Europe by Paris Saint-Germain on penalties.

“We all have to realise the job is not done for what we have coming up,” Van Dijk said. “We have to work our ass [off] for it.”

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Asked whether winning the title would help the team forget about the deserved defeats, Van Dijk said: “Let’s hope so, but we can’t think about it like that. We have to turn this around. It’s how football works: in five days you lose twice and the world is sinking, sort of how you can say it, and two weeks before everything was sunshine and rainbows everywhere.”

The Liverpool captain missed out on a second trophy lift at Wembley, having won the competition last season. Van Dijk travelled to join the Netherlands squad for two Nations League games against Spain and has to wait until 2 April for Liverpool’s next match, at home to Everton.

Van Dijk said: “You play for the biggest prize that you work so hard for from the start of the season when no one expected us to be challenging for, first and foremost, the Premier League, one of the biggest prizes, and then on the side of that all the other trophies.

“The Champions League we couldn’t get it done, this we lost and the FA Cup, we got knocked out [at Plymouth]. We have nine games to go and I don’t think there’s any motivation needed to try to get the job done..”

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