Lucas Bergvall’s late winner settled Wednesday night’s game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with the goal arriving moments after the Spurs midfielder had escaped a second yellow card for a foul on Kostas Tsimikas.
The Reds’ unbeaten run was therefore halted at 24 matches and when Van Dijk was asked by Sky Sports to explain what led to just a second loss of the season, the captain said: “Obviously we played against an intense team with good attacking players. They can make it difficult, they keep running.
“I think we created good moments [and] good opportunities at times – not really clear-cut chances in my opinion, but still enough that we could have scored.
“Unfortunately we didn’t. It’s quite cliched but it’s half-time now and I’m looking forward to the game back at Anfield.”
Van Dijk continued: “I’m not sure we were a level or two [below our best] but obviously at times I think we could have done better.
“But that’s part of football as well: you try to play your best game ever, every one of us, and at times we played through them nicely and we created some one-v-ones on the side and we created some dangerous moments.
“But they were able to defend it much better than they did when we played here a couple of weeks ago. And, yeah, we move on – we take it on the chin.
“Like I said, it’s half-time and we have another 90+ minutes to go and like I said, I am really looking forward to that.”
Read our match report from Tottenham Hotspur Stadium