The old guard help flailing Liverpool to find their feet

Virgil van Dijk will go from facing Kylian Mbappe to Erling Haaland this Sunday, but he had another opponent in mind. Stood on the Anfield pitch, fresh from beating Real Madrid, with a similarly seismic clash against Manchester City next, the Liverpool captain raised the subject of title rivals.

- RICHARD JOLLY

“You can see at the moment Arsenal are flying, and it is down to clean sheets and not conceding chances,” he said. Which didn’t seem to be Liverpool’s ethos when they were hurtling their way through action-packed games, relying on late goals and brinkmanship, taking and losing leads until they found themselves losing matches.

In a six-game spell, there were four when Liverpool did not even have a clean sheet after a quarter of an hour, let alone an hour and a half.

Much can change in a week and Arne Slot could reflect with satisfaction on how both Mbappe and Vinicius Junior were unable to illuminate Anfield. “It is difficult to control them completely but I think we did almost the maximum you can do against these two individuals,” he said.

And if the most memorable moment of Mbappe’s night was a shot skied into the Anfield Road Stand, to derisory cheers from the Liverpool faithful, Vinicius fought a titanic battle with Conor Bradley. The Northern Irishman won it.