Liverpool legend Steve Nicol suggested that Virgil van Dijk's poor individual display against Crystal Palace on Sunday had a knock-on effect on Milos Kerkez at Wembley.

Kerkez was making his first official appearance for the Reds but did not enjoy the best of debuts, although that is hardly surprising given his lack of game time for the club.

Palace had plenty of joy down Liverpool's left side, and Nicol believes part of that was because Van Dijk's own poor performance at left center-back meant he could not devote as much of his focus to trying to help his new teammate.



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Nicol said: “I think part of the problem today was because Van Dijk’s struggling a little bit, then he’s putting more time into what he’s doing as opposed to what he probably should be doing more of early doors, which is getting Kerkez in either tighter or wider depending on the situation.

“If there’s no communication between Kerkez and Van Dijk, then it’s really tough to blame Kerkez, because he’s not used to being in a certain place with that back four.

“So, for me a lot of that is down to Van Dijk,” Nicol added.

“With the second goal, when you’re playing the way he was playing you don’t see things clearly, and when you don’t see things clearly it then makes it hard to help somebody else at the same time.

“It’s going to take time for Kerkez to figure out how wide or how tight he should be and the only way to do that is through games or on the training field.”

Van Dijk was culpable for both of Palace's goals on an off day for the Liverpool captain, and while Slot — unsurprisingly — did not single out individual players for their performances in the game, he made it clear that he was not happy with the defending on show from his team.

"I think in the whole pre-season we saw that we are able to create more and we are more comfortable on the ball, we create more opportunities, chances, we dominate maybe even more," Slot said.

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"Last season we had a lot of ball possession but that didn’t always lead to promising situations

Marinos], two against [Athletic Club] Bilbao and again two today.

"What made us really strong last season was we only won mostly by a margin of one goal and that had mostly to do with us keeping a clean sheet or as a maximum conceding one goal.

"Today we scored twice against Palace, last season we were not able to do that once – we beat them 1-0 and we had a 1-1 draw at Anfield

That’s the positive.

"But conceding two; against a good team, by the way, that has made it really difficult for everyone last season and I’m expecting them [to] this season again.

"A lot of balls passed into our last line and a lot of crosses