New Liverpool captain has called on fans to be patient as the club is going through a ‘little transition’ during an ‘interesting’ summer.
After Jordan Henderson’s move to the Saudi Pro League and James Milner’s departure for Brighton, the Dutchman will take the armband, with named vice-captain.
It has been an eventful summer at Anfield, with the likes of Fabinho, Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlin also leaving, meaning needs a significant midfield revamp.
has arrived, as has Dominik Szoboszlai from RB Leipzig, but the Reds are looking for more reinforcements as they look to recover from a below-par season last time around.
Despite a strong finish Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League and Van Dijk is very keen to put that right in the coming campaign, although admits that the team is in a state of flux at the moment.
‘Yeah, obviously it has been a very disappointing year last year,’ Van Dijk told . ‘It was actually not a bad run-in. Obviously in the end we didn’t achieve anything we hoped to achieve and that was very disappointing.
‘Then you’re going on a very short summer holiday and you reflect on the season you’ve had, personally and as a team, and it hurts. It hurts a lot. You have pride as a human being and you feel like you could have done a lot better, you could have done a lot more consistently.
‘I think that was a big thing that was missing: the consistent level that we showed over the last couple of years was missing. And obviously everyone wants to make this right.
‘We all feel we have to do this together again each and every day, each and every game, with the fans as well.
‘Obviously it has been quite an interesting summer with players obviously leaving and new players coming in, this little transition that is going on.
‘We also have to be a bit patient but we want to be there and we want to show what we’re capable of because we have a fantastic group of players, staff, fans, stadium, we shouldn’t even discuss that.
‘But we can be up there again. It’s all about doing it together with the consistency and hopefully we can show it. We want to show not only to ourselves but to the supporters and to the world that we are going to be back and we feel like we will be.’
The Reds go to Stamford Bridge on 13 August to begin their Premier League campaign before hosting Bournemouth on 19 August.
, . , and .
