Virgil van Dijk on Momentum and Making Winning a Habit

Liverpool’s past three games haven’t seen the Reds looking perfect but they have all ended in victory—and brought plenty of goals along the way, both for and against. In those three wins against LASK, Brentford, and Villarreal they’ve scored 12 times and conceded seven.Certainly, then, it’s been exciting. And, in the end, they’ve deserved all three wins on balance. All of which means they appear to have a little momentum to carry with them into Sunday’s league tie against Brighton.“Momentum is a big thing in football, and it is important that we maintain ours,” club captain Virgil van Dijk noted ahead of the match. “After three wins in a row there is definitely a good feeling within the group, but that will count for nothing unless we follow up with another strong performance.“Brighton arrive in great form and will provide a really good test for us—we will need to be at our very best if we want to come away with all three points. I think Tuesday night’s win over Villarreal showed we are moving in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.”Van Dijk himself was shaky to start the mid-week European tie against Villarreal, with the Reds going down 2-0 before waking up and dominating most of the rest of the way to take the game 4-3 and keep their league phase Champions League record perfect.In the end, though, it’s the win that matters. It’s the battling back that matters. It’s scoring more goals than the opposition that matters—whether that means getting a 1-0 or 4-3 victory at the end of the day.“The first half hour in particular was not the best,” Van Dijk added. “I definitely include myself in that, and we found ourselves behind—deservedly so. But if that was the negative side, the positive was the way we responded. We battled our way back into the game and our performance in the second half was much improved“I said before Villarreal that winning is a habit, and it is a habit that breeds confidence within a squad. I think you could see that on Tuesday. We knew the opening wasn’t good enough, but we reacted in exactly the right way and the attitude we showed, the work we put in, was rewarded.”