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Van Dijk refuses to agree that title race is over

SoccerNews in English Premier League 19 Jan 2020

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Virgil van Dijk said the memory of losing the Premier League title race to Manchester City in 2018-19 is keeping Liverpool grounded after his side’s 2-0 victory over Manchester United at Anfield.

The Netherlands international scored his side’s opener after 14 minutes of a game that threatened to slip through their fingers when the visitors finished strongly, but Mohamed Salah doubled Liverpool’s lead in second-half stoppage time to put the Reds 16 points clear at the top of the table.

Chants of “we’re going to win the league” rang out around Anfield at the final whistle but Van Dijk insisted the team’s focus would immediately be on a difficult trip to Wolves on Thursday.

“Everyone wants us to say something about it but we won’t get carried away,” Van Dijk told Sky Sports. “We in the squad cannot and we won’t.

“I think what we experienced last year is something that made our mentality like this. We just want to go one game at a time, trying to stay fit and improve. Even after today, which was a well-deserved, fantastic win.

“We all know how difficult Wolves is, what good tactics they have, the players they have, the manager is fantastic there. What we try to do is prepare very well, make sure we all recover from this, be 100 per cent.

“We all expect it to be a very tough game. It makes it easy to prepare if you know it’s going to be tough and you know there will be difficult moments.”

Van Dijk disagreed with the VAR ruling that judged him to have fouled David de Gea in the 25th minute as Liverpool had a Roberto Firmino goal ruled out.

But the Reds, by Van Dijk’s own admission, had enough opportunities to put the game out of United’s reach before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men caused nervous moments as they probed for a late equaliser.

“I think I didn’t jump with my hands up,” said Van Dijk, explaining his challenge on De Gea.

“It’s difficult to say but if the VAR gives it you just have to accept it and carry on. I thought it was no foul.

“We had plenty more opportunities to score goals today and make it look easy. We had two, three, maybe four clear cut chances to make it easy but you have to find a way and we did.”

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