Virgil van Dijk could not help but laugh at the prospect of facing Newcastle United in the early kick-off after Liverpool failed with an appeal to push the game back.
Liverpool 's trip to St James' Park will be the Reds' ninth game this month as Jurgen Klopp's side bid to become the first team in history to win the quadruple. Such has been Liverpool's packed fixture schedule, Saturday's clash will take place just 63 hours after the Merseysiders defeated Villarreal in the first-leg of their Champions League semi-final tie at Anfield.
Liverpool wanted more time to recover and prepare for the game against Newcastle and, perhaps, that should not come as a surprise given how strong the Magpies have been at home under Eddie Howe. Klopp even went as far as to say that 'if you want to cause us problems, you send us to 12.30 at Newcastle' weeks before the match was due to take place.
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Liverpool subsequently asked the Premier League to push the game back to a later kick-off time, but top-flight bosses rejected this appeal. Although Howe admitted he had 'every sympathy' with Liverpool, the Newcastle head coach rightly pointed out that the black-and-whites had to 'bite the bullet and get on with it' when his side played three away games in a row in the space of just a week last month.
Klopp has since said, once more, that the prospect of going to Newcastle so soon after playing Villarreal was 'brutal' before the Liverpool boss stressed it was 'fine' and the 'best situation you can have', but, clearly, it remains a talking point in the Liverpool dressing room. Although it is rare for players to mention a kick-off time in the immediate aftermath of a Champions League semi-final first-leg win, that is just what van Dijk did at Anfield on Wednesday night.
"We're in the competitions and we're not just in the competitions to participate," the Liverpool defender told beIN SPORTS after his side's 2-0 win against Villarreal. "Nobody at the beginning of the season would probably have thought that we are still competing for every competition, but we're here now.
"We will give it a go. We will have to take it game by game. Today was a very important one, tough one. 2-0. Good. The tie's not over and now we have to recover and be ready for a 12.30 kick-off [laughs] in Newcastle."
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