Virgil van Dijk delivers scathing Liverpool assessment after shock Wolves upset | OneFootball

Reds captain doesn’t hold back with criticism after last-gasp defeat by Premier League’s bottom club at Molineux

Virgil van Dijk strongly criticised Liverpool’s performance after they fell to a shock late defeat against Wolves.

But relegation-bound Wolves would have the final say as they secured back-to-back top-flight wins for the first time since April 2025, with Andre’s low effort four minutes into stoppage time taking a huge deflection off Joe Gomez and wrong-footing Alisson on its way into the net.

Per Opta Sports, it was the fifth game Liverpool have lost this season thanks to a goal conceded in stoppage time - the most of any side in one campaign in Premier League history.

It was also the first time that a team in the relegation zone had ever scored a stoppage-time winner against the defending Premier League champions, leaving Van Dijk to lament a hugely disappointing display that hits Liverpool’s Champions League qualification hopes, leaving them fifth as they missed the chance to move above Aston Villa into fourth on goal difference.

They will drop down to sixth by the same metric if Chelsea win at Villa Park on Wednesday night.

“I think it's down to ourselves,” Liverpool captain Van Dijk told TNT Sports. “It was slow, we were predictable, sloppy in possession and wrong decision-making.

“Obviously we didn't concede chances but if you perform like that then a result like this can be a result of that and that's a fact. It was disappointing.”

On Liverpool’s frustratingly slow start to the game in which they failed to create any clear-cut chances during a drab first half, Van Dijk said: “It's not one reason why that's the case. The game nowadays in general, we analyse and over-analyse why things are happening on the pitch.

“We as a team want to start a game as well as we can and in the last game [the 5-2 win over West Ham] we did. Today we had majority possession but we were still making wrong decisions and we couldn't find the end product.

“Conceding goals is always frustrating. We've come on the back of a couple of clean sheets, defensively we've been very solid, but it is what it is and we have to move quickly on because we come back here in a couple of days and we want to do well in the FA Cup. We have to show a reaction.”

Asked if he thought he had been fouled by Arokodare in the build-up to Wolves’ first goal, he added: “There’s been a lot of speculation over the last couple of weeks about fouls being given and not given.

“The ref didn’t give it. That’s the reality and we have to deal with that.”

On the Wolves result making their top-five push more difficult, Van Dijk replied: “The whole season is not easy. It was always going to be an ups and downs season for multiple reasons.

“The league is strong and the league is demanding every three or four days and it's a big battle. We need everyone at their best and we need a big squad in this sense.

“We need results and in the last couple of weeks we had the results and today we didn't. It says that we still have work to do and that's pretty obvious and that's what we should focus on.”