Virgil van Dijk believes that Liverpool need another forward before the summer transfer deadline after selling Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez. The Reds have been heavily linked with Alexander Isak but Newcastle United are not willing to let go of their star striker without a fight, and a potential British record deal is currently hanging in the balance.
Liverpool had enough muscle at the top end of the pitch to score twice against Crystal Palace in the first 21 minutes of the Community Shield on Sunday. New £79million summer signing Hugo Ekitike found the bottom corner with a lovely finish to get the ball rolling, and Jeremie Frimpong’s cross sailed over Dean Henderson’s head to restore the lead after Jean-Philippe Mateta had equalised from the spot.
But in the end it was to be a miserable afternoon for Van Dijk and his team-mates. Ismaila Sarr forced a penalty shootout with a close-range finish off the post, and missed spot-kicks from Mohamed Salah, Alexis Mac Allister and Harvey Elliott saw the silverware handed to Palace.
“I hate losing and I’ve lost my last two games at Wembley,” said Van Dijk, who was also on the pitch when Liverpool suffered defeat in the Carabao Cup final against Newcastle in May.
Isak was on the scoresheet that day as the Magpies ran out 2-1 winners, and he could yet cross the divide, with Liverpool waiting for a sign to proceed with a second bid after their opening £110million proposal was knocked back earlier this month.
Arne Slot has welcomed Ekitike and Florian Wirtz to Anfield this summer, but with Diaz and Nunez departing for Bayern Munich and Al-Hilal respectively, Van Dijk feels that another attacker, like Isak perhaps, is exactly what the team needs.
He told talkSPORT: “Well, we just lost Darwin, He went to Saudi and we lost Lucho, obviously he went to Bayern. I think there’s always room for an attacker in order to strengthen us so let’s see what the window brings in terms of the balance of the team.”
But Slot seemed to disagree, saying: “I think we have more than more than enough [attacking] options to be good enough to win again. This is where I focus on myself. With the players we have, we should be able to to win, to score. That’s actually what we did as well. We scored twice and last season we only scored one against them, away and at home. We could only score one against them.
“So my last concern at the moment is our offensive quality. It’s more… it’s not a concern, but if I look at the amount of goals we’ve conceded in pre-season, that’s not of our standard.”
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