Virgil Van Dijk is widely known as a rock-solid defender, and he has earned a place in Premier League record books in a win against West Ham.
Liverpool reduced the deficit to three points to Man City at the top of the League standings. The Reds registered a narrow win against West Ham, courtesy of Sadio Mane’s first-half goal settled the tie at Anfield.
In the against West Ham United, the Dutch National team captain was playing his 60th Premier League home game. As the full-time whistle blew, Van Dijk set a new record. The Dutchman recorded no defeats in the sixty Premier League home games he played.
The previous record-holder was ex-Manchester United defender Lee Sharpe. Lee played four league seasons for Manchester United from the start of the competition in 1992. And he went without losing at Old Trafford and reached a total of 59 matches.
Virgil Van Dijk and Liverpool’s turnaround in form
After missing the 2020-21 season with an injury, there were doubts about when Virgil Van Dijk came back to Liverpool’s first team at the start of the 2021-22 season. Critics were asking whether he is still Van Dijk as we all knew.
And rightfully so, coming out of a big season-ending injury is not easy. We all have seen how a major injury affects players.
In the first half of the season, it did look like Liverpool’s defense were a little bit sloppy on a few occasions. Even though the Reds attack were tearing apart oppositions, there were instances where it seemed Van Dijk wasn’t the same as before.
Liverpool were scoring enormous amounts of goals, but they were unable to keep clean sheets.
But as soon as the season went on, Van Dijk showed his true colors. It is well known Klopp’s defense runs around Van Dijk, the Dutchman is the one who marshall’s the backline and players around him.
At the turn of the year, Liverpool turned around their fortunes. Liverpool have now closed City’s lead to just three points, which was twelve points at one stage. Liverpool are EFL Cup Champions and in a run for “Quadruple” for this season.
Since this impressive run, the Reds have conceded just two goals, and with 20 goals against this season, they have the third-best backline in the entire Premier League behind Man City and Chelsea.
The Reds will be back in action at Anfield on Tuesday. Klopp & Co. need to defend a 2-0 Champions League last-16 advantage in the second leg against Inter Milan.
