Virgil van Dijk says Liverpool must break their curse away from home this season and show the real Liverpool - starting in Amsterdam.
Jurgen Klopp’s side visit Ajax knowing that a result in the broiling atmosphere of the Dutch side’s 56,000 sold out stadium will deliver them into the knock out phase of the Champions League. But that is easier said than done for a team which won all of their away games in reaching the final of Europe’s premier competition last season, after a dismal record on the road during the current campaign.
They have won just one of seven away games in all competitions, and another defeat in the Amsterdam Arena would give them real problems in qualifying from the group stage. And van Dijk said: “We want to improve the situation, we want to improve the away results. It starts tomorrow. We want to show tomorrow that we are Liverpool.
“It is not something that we like. It is something we want to improve as a group. We will try and show the intensity that we always want to show. Again - we need that. We need fit players, we need to grind out results to get momentum. That’s what we showed against City and West Ham - but we only had ourselves to blame for losing at Forest, we should have buried them we didn’t and now we move on.”
Van Dijk’s reference to needing ‘fit players’ echoed something that manager Klopp also referred to. He has struggled this season to name a consistent starting line up, with a long list of injuries from the very start of the campaign. Thiago is the latest problem, with an ‘ear infection’ which kept him out of the defeat at Forest and also rules him out against Ajax, while Joel Matip is also still missing.
Klopp does have Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Naby Keita on the way back, but both were left out of the Champions League squad after the manager was told they wouldn’t be fit for the group games. And he said: “The away form is not something in my mind at the moment, I am not sitting here thinking about the away problem is why I have to say something special for tomorrow (Wednesday).
“I prepare the team for a very important football game, and sorry but I have other things to do in the last few games. Can I explain it (what has gone wrong)? Yeah, we see the performances and they are not as stable and consistent as they were. Explanations for that? Injuries are a little bit.
“A lot of problems for us, some players were injured, some players were not allowed to play but were there. Hahaha, let me say it like this. Thiago is still out - I hope he is not a doubt for the weekend, but who know. Darwin Nunez, very int good he trained yesterday and today, so yes, in this moment he’s available.
“Konate is here ready to play minutes I would say. He could play the first minutes, but that would not make sense, nothing new there!” Klopp will have to make do and mend against Ajax, with either Harvey Elliott or Curtis Jones playing in an unfamiliar role on the left.
