Souness urges Liverpool to hand Van Dijk new deal and singles out Szoboszlai as problem

Graeme Souness has urged Liverpool to offer Virgil van Dijk a contract extension and has pointed to Dominik Szoboszlai’s work off the ball as a key factor behind the club’s inconsistent start to the season.

Van Dijk, 35, is out of contract at Anfield next summer, with no decision yet made on whether he will remain on Merseyside. Souness, however, is in little doubt about what the club should do. “I think there’s still life left in Virgil,” the former Liverpool captain said. “There’s definitely another year left on him. I’ll be giving him another year anyway with an option to take a second year because he’s a Rolls-Royce of a player. And if anything, he’s got better the longer he’s been at Liverpool.”

Souness also pushed back on the narrative that Van Dijk never fully recovered from the knee injury inflicted by Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. “People criticised him when he got that terrible injury, but he came back from that and it’s a lazy thing to say he’s not the same player. I didn’t see that,” he said. He added that playing alongside Ibrahima Konaté had at times been a complicating factor for the Dutchman.

On Liverpool’s broader struggles this season, Souness expressed confidence in head coach Andoni Iraola — whom he observed closely during his time at Bournemouth — but identified a lack of defensive intensity from the midfield as the root cause of the team’s vulnerability. “A lot of it can be traced back to the midfield not putting the ball under pressure,” he said. “When you don’t have it, working the players who are in possession to keep their heads down so they can’t pick a cute pass against you.”

Szoboszlai was named specifically in that context. While Souness praised the Hungarian’s quality in possession, he suggested the 23-year-old needs to contribute more when Liverpool are without the ball — a deficiency he believes has left the defence exposed.

Souness made the comments ahead of the release of his new book, Graeme Souness: My Rangers.