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Turkish media were left in agreement with Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk after Galatasaray was eliminated from the Champions League at the hands of Arne Slot's side on Wednesday.
While Liverpool won 4-0 and sailed through with a good performance, the scoreline could have been a lot more severe had the visiting goalkeeper, Ugurcan Cakir, not been in good form. The 29-year-old let in four efforts, but Liverpool racked up 5.43 expected goals across 32 shots.
The Turkish outlet Haberler noted that Cakir played well and commended Van Dijk for praising him. The Liverpool star felt that his team could have won by even more had it not been for Galatasaray's star man.
"I think we could have scored many more goals, but the Galatasaray goalkeeper, despite conceding four goals, still put in a very good performance," Van Dijk said.
"We suffered both of our defeats against Galatasaray away. I think the Galatasaray fans played a huge role in the home team's victory. Today, however, we were at home and performed well."
Liverpool looked at its most free-flowing in attack in this game, with Mohamed Salah performing well and Florian Wirtz cropping up all over the field despite starting on the left.
"Yeah, but it's not as simple as you think to say, 'OK, if you can bring this tonight, you can bring this effort every single game you have'," Arne Slot insisted when asked if this was the formula for future success.
"There's an opponent to play against, there's a style of play. There are so many factors that why we could bring tonight what we could bring. I think it's fair to say for me — especially for all of you because you are following Liverpool so many times — that Anfield and the players can also rise to the occasion.
"I think there have been many, many, many moments or parts of games where we showed this but usually we have 10 minutes where we drop down a little bit or the other team takes over and that's 99 out of 100 times have been the moments where we conceded because that's the first chance of them and they scored.
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"Now today that didn't happen because we did not concede at all and we didn't drop at all in terms of our intensity. So yeah, we would like us to perform every single time at this level.
"Unfortunately, for the fifth, sixth time now, I think that we only get two days' rest to go to Brighton, early kick-off. For me, that's not realistic. You see more and more players get injured in this period of time because it's such a tight schedule.
"We should have [been] given a bit more rest but that hasn't happened a lot to us this season. Brighton is an intense team we're going to face and we will bring the best game possible again on Saturday.
"But you cannot compare Brighton to Galatasaray, or you cannot compare Tottenham to Galatasaray. Every game has its own story. I hope this is the standard we are looking for, so let's see if we can bring that every single time from now on."
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