Virgil van Dijk questioned the desire of his Liverpool teammates after a 2-0 defeat at Everton dealt a hammer blow to their Premier League title hopes.

It leaves Liverpool three points behind top-of-the-table Arsenal and just a point ahead of Manchester City, who have played two less games.

Van Dijk was among many Liverpool players who struggled with both goals coming from set pieces, the first after a number of errors as Reds stars attempted to clear their lines, while Darwin Núñez missed a golden opportunity at the other end in the first half.



At half-time, Reds legend Jamie Carragher suggested Alexis Mac Allister had failed to follow two unwritten 'rules' of playing at Goodison Park and not allowing the crowd to get into the game.

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Speaking to Sky Sports at full-time, Van Dijk did not hold back in a damning assessment of their performance as he asked if his teammates "really want to win the league?".

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Van Dijk said: “Listen, very disappointed in so many ways and I think everyone has to look in the mirror and look at their performance, if they really gave everything and do they really want to win the league?

“Obviously we’re fighting, and we still have games after tonight, but to play like we did, overall, in the game like today and not winning challenges, giving the ref and opportunity to give a free kick, like he did many times, then we have no chance to win the title.

“It’s a tough one, and we need to do much better against a side that’s playing against relegation and it’s now to focus on the 12:30 kickoff again.”

Asked if they had simply ran out of ideas, Van Dijk added: “I think you try to force things and I think we gave so many crosses where they can just clear it quite easily, and I still think we had, in the first half, clear cut chances that we should have scored.

“But eventually we weren’t good enough and it starts with the fight.

Like I said, we all have to do much better and we can’t let the season go out like tonight.
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