Virgil van Dijk was not happy with Trent Alexander-Arnold after the Liverpool skipper cut his knees celebrating the full-back’s last-gasp winner against Fulham on Sunday. Alexander-Arnold’s stunning freekick crashed off the bar and bounced in off Bernd Leno’s back to open up the scoring for the home side before Harry Wilson equalised for the visitors.
On the stroke of halftime, Alexis Mac Allister scored a stunner to put the Reds back in front but Kenny Tete latched onto a loose ball to ensure that both sides went into the break level. The second half saw the Cottagers take the lead for the first time in the game when Bobby De Cordova-Reid’s header beat Caoimhin Kelleher between the sticks in the 80th minute.
The Englishman reeled away in delight and surely felt he had gone and won it but there were two more twists on the cards. Wataru Endo pegged one back with a sensational strike from the edge of the box and then Alexander-Arnold sent the Kop end into a frenzy as he rifled home a half-volley to put Liverpool 4-3 up.
During the jubilant celebrations, Alexander-Arnold slid on his belly while Van Dijk went down on his knees, slicing them up in the process.
“He’s (Van Dijk) got cuts on his knees because it’s the first time he’s done a knee slide for someone like him who is calm and composed to knee slide shows how much it meant to the team,” said Alexander-Arnold.
“I’ve got a big cut on my knee (from a previous game) so I didn’t want to risk reopening that with a knee slide so I thought I had to do something,” he added. “You can see the emotion in it, how much it meant to the team and the fans.
“It was massively important to stay in and around the top of the table. We’ve got a big week ahead of us which starts in midweek, it was good to get momentum going into that.
“I don’t even know if I can sum it (the game) up in one word, delighted really. We needed the three points with Arsenal getting the result, we needed to stay in touching distance.
“At this time of year, the games come thick and fast, if you can pick up momentum in the Christmas and January period and come out with wins going into February and March… this isn’t the right time to drop points.”
