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Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk has warned Darwin Nunez that the incident in which he was sent off against Crystal Palace cannot be repeated. Nunez, who was signed in the summer for a fee that could rise to £85million, was dismissed for headbutting Palace defender Joachim Andersen.
Nunez and Andersen had been involved in a tense battle throughout the 1-1 draw at Anfield. However, tensions boiled over when the former Benfica man stuck his head into the Dane’s face just before the hour.
The 23-year-old was dismissed for violent conduct and now misses Liverpool’s next three Premier League matches. The Reds have very few fit senior forwards, and Van Dijk has warned Nunez that he must learn from the incident.
“He’s got the backing from us and he knows it should not happen again and hopefully it will be that way,” the Dutchman told journalists after the game.
“He has to control himself, definitely. I think that’s a separate thing. He has to manage himself, he has to be knowing that these things can happen, especially in the Premier League. It will be a learning curve for him and hopefully it will never happen again.”
Nunez was also criticised by head coach Jurgen Klopp. The German conceded that Nunez had given his team-mates a tough battle, with the incident occurring when Liverpool trailed to Wilfried Zaha’s opener.
Asked by Sky Sports if Nunez had let down his colleagues, Klopp said: “Look, he knows that himself. I will talk to him. It makes no sense for me to talk about it in public, you see it.
“It’s not the reaction you want to see. Centre-halves in the Premier League do that – they want to have him, he’s a handful himself but that’s a reaction.
“There’s no time, there’s no pre-season. We don’t know how long he will be suspended. We will use it (suspension) for physical work – not as punishment – but making him even stronger and that’s what we’ll try.”
Ten-man Liverpool fought back to draw courtesy of Luis Diaz’s thumping effort. But the Anfield outfit’s opening two Premier League games have now ended in stalemates.
Van Dijk concluded: “We’ve played two games so far this season and there’s still a long way to go so anything can happen. That’s been shown over the last years so we’ll focus on ourselves.
“We don’t read what the others from the outside say about us because nobody knows what’s really going on.”
