Real reason Virgil van Dijk was withdrawn in Liverpool’s defeat to Brentford

Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk was withdrawn at half-time of the Reds 3-1 defeat at Gtech Community Stadium on Monday night by host Brentford with the Merseysiders trailing 2-0.

And Liverpool boss, Jurgen Klopp has insisted that the decision to withdraw the defender at half-time was purely down to injury while he criticised the performance of referee Stuart Atwell National Daily learnt.

Strangely, Liverpool delivered a very miserable first-half display on the night, with an own goal from Ibrahima Konate and a brilliant Yoane Wissa header giving the hosts a two-goal lead at the break.

Brentford gave a superb of themselves on the night despite missing their star man Ivan Toney as they had two further efforts ruled out by VAR for offside and Klopp responded at half-time by making a triple sub, with skipper-for-the-night Van Dijk surprisingly replaced by Joel Matip.

Kostas Tsimikas and Harvey Elliott were also withdrawn and Liverpool’s performance improved markedly in the second period, with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain pulling a goal back shortly after the restart.

But their hopes of a comeback were snuffed out in the 84th minute when Konate was bundled aside by Bryan Mbeumo, who calmly slotted the ball past Alisson to seal the win for Brentford.

Van Dijk watched the second half from the dugout with his right thigh appearing to be heavily strapped and Klopp has now confirmed that the 31-year-old picked up a knock.

Jurgen Klopp insists that the withdrawal of Van Ddijk at half-time was purely down to injury

Asked to explain Van Dijk’s substitution, Klopp told beIN Sports: ‘Virgil felt his hamstring a little bit. He said he was fine but when I said “we don’t take any risks” the physios were quite happy with that. I think it’s nothing serious, but that’s why we changed him.’

Klopp was far from happy with how physical Brentford were allowed to be, particularly on set-pieces, and criticised referee Atwell for not calling a foul when Mbuemo tussled with Konate before Brentford’s third goal.

He continued: ‘They use obviously the rules pretty well in their offensive set-pieces. They are extremely physical and in the end nobody knows where the ball is actually, and then it’s an own goal and that’s obviously very unlucky.

‘Second goal I’m very disappointed with because we’d got away with the set-piece goal because of an offside but the next action is behind and we are again not ready, so that’s the goal I hate the most.

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‘And the third goal should not be a goal, easy as that. If you have ever played football and you are doing a full sprint and you get a slight push you go down because you cannot keep balanced, that’s how it is and you can see it with Ibou [Konate] but Stuart Atwell wanted to see it differently.’

On whether he has spoken to the referee, Klopp added: ‘It’s exactly the same like talking to my microwave, you get no response really. It’s just always the same.

‘Before the season they give us the advice that the players have to be careful in this moment because the refs will have an eye on it and then you see these games and you see that pretty much everything is allowed.

‘It’s always on the edge. And they [Brentford] use that and they accept that sometimes it’s an offensive foul and today there was one offensive foul on set-pieces around the box and we did it – very funny!’