The Warm-Up: Will Virgil van Dijk magically solve Liverpool’s problems?
Plus: a weird game between City and Newcastle, the other Donnarumma stars and chalk another one up for the great wanderer.
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Liverpool sign Van Dijk, but how much difference will it make?
And so, we have been saved from what could have been one of January’s more tedious transfer sagas, as Liverpool very courteously announced the signing of Virgil van Dijk for [checks notes, puffs out cheeks, wipes sweat from brow] £75million.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdNxYbwHLXX/?taken-by=virgilvandijk
This of course is a hangover from the summer, when Liverpool took Van Dijk for a nice day out in Blackpool but rather peskily forgot to obtain Southampton’s permission to do so. Apologies were issued, Saints’ palms were crossed with much silver and now they’ve got their man.
The question now is whether this will actually do Liverpool much good. There remains a nagging feeling that you could have peak Alan Hansen and Franco Baresi at the back in this Liverpool team but, if it’s Klopp and his coaches telling them what to do, they’ll still defend like Djimi Traore on ice.
Van Dijk won’t solve all of Liverpool’s defensive problems but is one of a 3 part solution. A new keeper next on the shopping list.
— David Preece (@davidpreece12) December 27, 2017
Van Dijk is a fine player, but there is something of a danger that he is viewed as unquestionably the answer to all of Liverpool’s woes, when he’s nothing of the sort. Their next priority be a new goalkeeper or a proper holding midfielder – or, given the Premier League leaders have dropped two points in 20 matches, maybe both.
Still, presumably someone somewhere is getting a present this morning. “Look out there and tell me five [defenders] that would make us stronger,” said Klopp in August. “Five. Then you win a prize. It’s difficult how it is.”
