{"id":505466,"date":"2025-12-04T01:44:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=505466"},"modified":"2025-12-04T01:44:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:44:53","slug":"van-dijks-decline-continues-as-liverpool-continues-to-struggle","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/van-dijks-decline-continues-as-liverpool-continues-to-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Dijk&#8217;s decline continues as Liverpool continues to struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mo Salah has been under scrutiny for his poor form in the current campaign and started from the bench in his 2<sup>nd<\/sup> straight EPL match as Sunderland faced them on Wednesday at Anfield.<\/p>\n<p>But it was the Reds\u2019 captain Virgil van Dijk, a peerless defensive bedrock as the club has been at the top in the past few years, whose awful display became the topic after the 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n<p>Virgil, who is 34 years old, and Salah, who is only a year younger, both inked lucrative 2-year contracts in the past summer, and all the fans of the team were happy about that. However, things stand differently at the moment, only a few months into the new season, as the form of both Liverpool leaders is very bad.<\/p>\n<p>The club has been vulnerable in defence ever since manager Arne Slot spent 450 million pounds in the last transfer window, as that hasn\u2019t brought the results that everyone expected.<\/p>\n<p>Ibrahima Konate is also in awful form, and with Milos Kerkez failing to settle at left-back, things don\u2019t look great for Liverpool now.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Virgil van Dijk gave the ball away in the buildup of Sunderland&#39;s goal that was also a deflected shot off his backside.<\/p>\n<p>Tough sequence \ud83d\ude2c <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pz2lslWUQP\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/pz2lslWUQP<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ESPNFC\/status\/1996335414190166483?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">December 3, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mo Salah has been under scrutiny for his poor form in the current campaign and started from the bench in his 2nd straight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":505467,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[16722,18719],"news_category":[136,14235],"gn_keywords":[17887,20712],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"The Dutch defender is a shadow of his imperious self.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505468,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505466\/revisions\/505468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505466"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=505466"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=505466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}