Virgil van Dijk’s Contract Is the Easy Call, Liverpool’s Midfield Is the Hard One

Liverpool do not have many straightforward decisions in front of them this season, but what to do about Virgil van Dijk’s contract is one of them. The far trickier question, the one Andoni Iraola actually loses sleep over, is why his midfield keeps making games harder than they need to be.

Graeme Souness addressed the Van Dijk question directly in conversation with The Mirror, and his logic is hard to pick apart. He floated a simple structure, one more year with the option of a second, and described Van Dijk as having only got better the longer he has stayed at Anfield. We would go further. A player who still reads danger a half second before everyone else on the pitch is not a sentimental keep, he is a practical one.

Why the Van Dijk Call Should Not Take Long

The lazy version of this debate says Van Dijk has never been quite the same since the knee injury he suffered against Everton several seasons back. Souness dismissed that line as recycled nonsense, and he is right to. Centre backs in their mid-thirties are not measured by sprint data, they are measured by positioning, timing and the speed of their decision making, and on all three Van Dijk still ranks near the top of the Premier League.

There was also a sharper observation buried in there about how physically demanding it has been for Ibrahima Konate to play alongside a defender of Van Dijk’s standing, which says plenty about why Liverpool’s back line still looks coherent even in a mixed season. Keep the captain on sensible terms, give him the platform to keep organising that unit, and the rest largely sorts itself out.

The Midfield Problem Iraola Still Has to Solve

Where this gets more interesting is the explanation for why Liverpool keep starting matches slowly. It is tempting to point at the back four or blame whoever is in goal when the scoreline goes wrong, but that misses where most of the damage actually starts. Souness traced it back to midfield, specifically the lack of intensity in the moments right after Liverpool lose the ball.

Iraola’s whole project at Bournemouth was built on exactly this kind of relentless, front foot pressing, and nobody should be shocked that he wants the same here. The problem is not the idea, it is the execution. When the press does not arrive early enough, the opposition gets time to pick the pass that splits the midfield, and suddenly the back four are defending space that should never have opened up in the first place.

That is the uncomfortable truth underneath Liverpool’s shaky starts this season. A defence can only look as organised as the players screening it allow, and when the midfield fails to close down the ball carrier, every defender behind them is reacting instead of controlling.

Our Take

These two issues are connected, and that is the real point here. Van Dijk is proof of what this squad still has, a defender capable of organising a back line under pressure and setting standards every day in training. The midfield is proof of what this squad still lacks, the consistency and bite required to make Iraola’s system work the way it is supposed to.

Sort the contract, that part genuinely is simple. Then put the real energy into fixing the pressing structure in front of the back four, because that is the piece of the puzzle that actually decides whether Iraola’s Liverpool becomes the side everyone expects or stays stuck searching for consistency.