Rio Ferdinand is standing by his criticism of Liverpool 's horrendous 4-1 defeat to Napoli after Virgil van Dijk aimed a dig at the Manchester United legend and his fellow pundits.
Van Dijk was part of the Reds side who were thrashed in Italy last week and the one that responded by beating Ajax 2-1 on Tuesday, with a late goal from Joel Matip sealing all three points. Although Jurgen Klopp labelled the performance a "real horror" and the worst of his seven-year tenure at Anfield, Van Dijk was irked by some of the criticism from the likes of Ferdinand.
"Not listening to the outside world is the most important thing," the Dutchman told BT Sport after Liverpool got the job done against Ajax and got their Champions League campaign belatedly up and running.
"It's funny sometimes because there's a lot of ex-football players and know exactly what we go through but they say a lot of things to try get us down.
"We know last week was unacceptable, very bad and we tried to make it right. This is a step in the right direction, don't get carried away because we played so many games. Now we have to focus on the national teams or the break then crack on."
Back in the BT studio, presenter Jake Humphrey prompted the ex-United defender to respond to Van Dijk's comments, asking him if he ever felt unfairly criticised by pundits during his career. "If I thought it was wrong or personal then I'd get the hump," Ferdinand admitted.
"If it was deserved, I'll hold my hands up and say. But listen, the performance in Naples, if they're honest every single one of them will say 'pfft, it was a bad day at the office and we deserved the criticism that we got'. But I think we reiterated on the night, we wasn't saying they became aa bad team over night or bad players, it was a bad performance."
The former England international had been highly critical of Van Dijk and co's display against Napoli, declaring: " [Mohamed] Salah 's not at the levels he was at before in terms of output, Virgil van Dijk the same. Fabinho even looks a bit off it, and you can go through the whole team.
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"The two full backs look off it, the goalkeeper. When you're a manager, normally you can rely on three or four players for those performances, he’s not getting that at the moment."
Thankfully for Liverpool, the pundits were much more complimentary this time around. " It was a huge three points, a performance you felt was important going into this game because it’s not been there really this season," ex-Reds striker Michael Owen stated.
"But do you know, the longer the game went on you felt forget the performance let's get three points and worry about the performance another day - it was huge. Liverpool won every header off of corners, Van Dijk had three or four, it was Matip in the end."
