Virgil van Dijk's assessment of Liverpool's defeat by Manchester United

The Reds fell to defeat at Anfield in the Premier League on Sunday through Harry Maguire's late header.

Bryan Mbeumo had given the visitors a 1-0 lead 62 seconds into the affair before Cody Gakpo equalised in the second half.

See what Van Dijk told Sky Sports in a post-match interview…

On why Liverpool lost the game...

Because we conceded a very sloppy second goal. We worked so hard to get back into the game, we created opportunities to score the winner, but if you concede a second goal like that, obviously that's the disappointing part. I think overall if you look at the game, we were far too rushed, I think we were making wrong decisions and they were also the moments where we were open if we lost the ball. Yeah, a disappointing day.

I think United was obviously very patient. They didn't press us that high and they let us have the ball. I think we made rash decisions at times where we had to stay maybe a little bit calm. We still created many opportunities to score and win the game. But the reality is that we lost. It's an interesting time now and we have to stick together – not only us as players but together with our fans and everyone who wants us to win.

Read our match report from Anfield

On the opening goal...

I think the ball goes long, the first header gets won by a United player, the second header won by me, in that moment obviously I hit Macca [Alexis Mac Allister], he goes down, I go down and that creates the space on my position in behind. I thought from the angle that it was pretty difficult to score but he managed to score. It's still early on in the game, so there's still plenty of football to be played. It was good for us to just stay calm but I think we didn't manage that in the best way and that's obviously disappointing.

On what's needed from the squad to get back on track...

First and foremost, stay humble and stay working and try and keep your confidence as high as possible, because when you lose your confidence could drop a little bit. But it's about staying very calm. We've been coming from a season where everything was unbelievable and everyone was praising everyone, positive and we became the champions and everyone was cheering for us as well. When things get tough, it's important that we keep that same mentality of being there for each other.

It's still a long season. Obviously it's easy to get dragged into a negative spiral but it's down to us to keep working, stay humble and improve as soon as possible and when you get the opportunity to show your quality and win your games. I mentioned it already before, you have to put things in perspective – we're in October now, so many twists and turns can happen. But the reality is we come off four defeats in a row now and we want to turn it around as soon as possible.

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