Virgil van Dijk says he stepped in to protect Mohamed Salah after he was accused of diving in Liverpool’s 5-1 win over Arsenal.
The Dutch defender was seen clashing with Gunners counterpart Sokratis Papastathopoulos at half-time of the Anfield encounter.
It followed the incident that saw Salah awarded a penalty after being caught by the Greece international in the box.
Sokratis could not hide his anger at the decision as he left the field at the break and van Dijk said: “I saw that he went to Mo and was saying that he dived.
“He was attacking him a bit, but I wanted to say he didn’t dive. Obviously everyone came around us and it looked like we were fighting or something but we weren’t.
“I just wanted to talk to him. But that happens in football and we move on.
“I’m protecting my team-mates and that’s normal, that’s how everyone should react and that’s what we all need to do, to back each other. That’s what I definitely do.”
Salah claimed his 16th goal of the season from the subsequent spot-kick and set up Sadio Mane for his strike.
The Egyptian then stepped aside from penalty duties to give Roberto Firmino the chance of his first Premier League hat-trick and seal a crushing victory that took Liverpool seven points clear at the top.
Salah was also accused of going down too easily to earn a penalty in the 4-0 win over Newcastle, but boss Jurgen Klopp added: “Look, I’m three years in and of the few things I read in the English press is the ref watch on Sky [television] after the game.
“Not a lot of times have I thought, ‘That was a penalty,’ and then looked at it to find it was not the right decision. ‘Ah, good decision,’ Dermot Gallagher said [after Newcastle], ‘penalty.’ His arm was there.
“Do we need blood for a proper penalty? I think no. In that moment, if you don’t touch Mo and he makes the next step and shoots – and we know he’s pretty good at that. These are the situations.
“I haven’t seen it back [with Sokratis] and I have no clue about what happened around it, but the ref really was close to it.
“We don’t have divers and that was not a dive. The other one [against Newcastle] is not a dive. The ref decides it. In the three-and-a-half years we have had more penalties not given when they were penalties and you think, hmph, hmph, hmph.”
Klopp, though, was more eager to reflect on a “brilliant performance” from his side.
Van Dijk also felt the Reds were “almost perfect”, conceding an opener to Ainsley Maitland-Niles but responding with a dominant display and a frontline to fear yet again.
“At the beginning of the season people were saying they didn’t click,” added van Dijk about Salah, Firmino and Mane.
“They’re fantastic. You see here in this game as well, they can be undefendable. It’s scary, good players, and I’m happy to see that. We were almost perfect, we conceded the goal and that was the only thing. But it was an important win.”
It also set Liverpool up perfectly for Thursday’s crucial clash at champions Manchester City.
“Arsenal had been playing pretty well this season so we had to stay focused on them, not think about City,” added van Dijk.
“City is a game that we want to win. It will be very hard, very tough, but for them as well. It’s going be a good match, but it is not a decisive game or something like that. We are not going to treat it different to any other. We will be prepared for a very tough game.
“We have finished 2018 now pretty well and hopefully we can keep that going.
“Confidence is definitely here, but it can change over a couple of games. We won’t get carried away. We need to keep doing what we have been doing.
“There will be setbacks, as there always is in life, but it’s how you react and so far we have been doing pretty well.
“There are things to improve, but we are top of the league, still in the Champions League, and we are doing well, just need to keep going.”
