Virgil van Dijk did not try to soften it. Speaking after Liverpool's 2-1 defeat to bottom-of-the-table Wolves — a result that handed the champions one of their most embarrassing results of the season — the Dutch captain was direct about what went wrong. Slow and predictable, he said. Two words that will not sit comfortably inside the Anfield dressing room.
Liverpool had equalised through Mohamed Salah in the 83rd minute and looked like they had scraped out of trouble. Then André's deflected effort in the 94th minute went in off Joe Gomez, Alisson was wrong-footed, and the stadium went wild. For Liverpool, it was the fifth time in one Premier League season they had conceded a winning goal in the 90th minute or later. No club in the history of the competition has done that as many times in a single campaign.
A problem that goes beyond bad luck
Van Dijk is right to flag it. Five late winners conceded is not unfortunate. It suggests something about how this Liverpool side manages games when they are level or narrowly ahead — an inability to see matches out, a lack of control in the closing stages that costs them repeatedly. Arne Slot has made Liverpool more structured in possession than they were under Jurgen Klopp, but the late-game vulnerability has become a genuine and documented weakness.
The wider concern is what matches like this do to the title race. Liverpool are still in the fight, but games you are supposed to win — away at the bottom club — cannot be donated like this. Every point that leaks out gets magnified as the season enters its final weeks. Slot will know that, and the disappointment in the post-match press conference was visible even through the careful language.
What Slot said — and what he did not say
The manager acknowledged the result was unacceptable without pointing fingers publicly. He spoke about the team needing to be more clinical at both ends of the pitch, about set-piece vulnerability, about the importance of the next fixture. Standard stuff. But the fact that Van Dijk — usually careful in his public comments — chose to go sharper in his own assessment suggests the frustration inside the camp runs deeper than the manager's words let on.
Liverpool face a defining run of fixtures. The title is not gone, but nights like Molineux remind you how fine the margins are at the top of English football. A champion side does not lose to the last-placed team in stoppage time. Something has to change.
Match facts: Wolves 2-1 Liverpool, 3 March 2026, Molineux. Liverpool's 5th stoppage-time defeat of the 2025-26 Premier League season — a competition record. Van Dijk post-match: "We were slow and predictable." Liverpool manager: Arne Slot.
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