Liverpool and their captain Virgil van Dijk have made a supreme start to the new Premier League season.

When Jurgen Klopp left Liverpool in the summer, there were many question marks over how his replacement Arne Slot would get on given the extra pressure on his shoulders.

When the German first took the Anfield job, the club was heading towards nearly three decades of not being champions of England and they hadn’t tasted European success since 2005.

But with players like van Dijk signing, the club transformed, won the Champions League in the Dutchman’s first full season and also became champions of England down the line.

That has resulted in van Dijk being regarded as one of the Premier League’s greatest-ever centre-backs and how he played a pivotal role in Klopp’s success.

It was just a coincidence that as soon as the ice-cool defender entered the building, the trophies started rolling in, including several domestic cups.

But Jason Cundy simply wasn’t having the noise around the Liverpool captain and what he had heard about the player on Sky Sports.

The former Chelsea man joked and called the broadcaster ‘Scouse Sports’ given that several ex-Liverpool players are working on that platform as pundits and how he thinks they can be biased towards the Merseyside club.

Whilst Cundy acknowledges van Dijk is a ‘brilliant’ player, he just didn’t agree with the notion that people on Sky were calling him ‘the best central defender the country has ever seen’, as he told talkSPORT (04/09/24 at 11:05 pm).

Liverpool fans will be fuming with these claims because they will feel van Dijk’s performances speak for themselves, as well as what opposition players have to say about him.

Premier League’s best centre-backs

“Van Dijk has been brilliant for Liverpool, I am not saying he is a bad player, at all,” said Cundy. “But I hear people on Sky Sports, Scouse Sports, talking about van Dijk as the best central defender the country has ever seen. Honestly, that is just the biggest load of tripe. It’s unbelievably bad. 

“Nothing to do with nostalgia (in liking John Terry and Rio Ferdinand). I won’t (after van Dijk retires that he is one of the greatest Premier League centre-backs of all time). I won’t because I am saying it now.

“If you offered me the pair of them, this season, then I am taking van de Ven.”

Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool contract

Liverpool beat Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford and van Dijk strolled at the back by helping his team to a clean sheet.

That’s three out of three for Slot and it has probably been a better start than he expected, but also wished for.

Van Dijk is a huge reason behind that, but he will be out of contract at the club next summer, with many questioning his future.

But he isn’t the only one, there are also doubts over whether Mohamed Salah will stay and also Trent Alexander-Arnold.

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