Even non-Liverpool fans would readily regard Virgil van Dijk as one of the best centre-backs the Premier League has seen…or at least most of them would!
In an extraordinary rant on talkSPORT (4 September, 23:05), Jason Cundy took aim at what he perceives to be an excessive LFC bias on Sky Sports, adding that he thinks there’s another Dutch defender in the English top flight who’s outperforming the Reds captain right now.
The ex-Chelsea player fumed: “Van Dijk has been brilliant for Liverpool. I am not saying he is a bad player, at all, but I hear people on Sky Sports, Scouse Sports, talking about Van Dijk as the best central defender the country has ever seen. Honestly, that is just the biggest load of tripe. It’s unbelievably bad.
“It’s nothing to do with nostalgia [in liking John Terry and Rio Ferdinand]. I won’t say [after Van Dijk retires that he’s one of the greatest Premier League centre-backs of all time]. I won’t because I am saying it now.”
Cundy then added that, if offered a choice over the Reds captain or Micky van de Ven ‘this season’, he’d opt for the latter.
Where do we even begin to unpick this tirade from the talkSPORT pundit?
Aside from one season in 2022/23 when his standards dropped, Van Dijk has been consistently brilliant in nine years in the Premier League, excelling for Southampton before evolving into the world’s best player in his position at Liverpool.
The fact that he came second in the FIFA Men’s Player of the Year rankings in 2019 tells you everything you need to know about the Dutchman’s standing in the global game, and the manner in which he’s come back from his Jordan Pickford-inflicted ACL layoff shows just how imperious a player he is.
Van de Ven has been magnificent for Tottenham, certainly, but he’d still need to perform to a consistently top-class level for several more years to replicate the legacy that the Reds captain has left on this league.
The numbers are there to demonstrate the improvement in Liverpool’s defence after Van Dijk joined midway through the 2017/18 campaign, and a record of just two defeats in 100 top-flight games at Anfield is staggering. We are in the presence of greatness, even if Cundy somehow can’t see it!
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