Arne Slot has revealed that Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk made a heartfelt gesture during the team\u2019s 3-0 Carabao Cup fourth-round defeat to Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n
Slot heavily rotated his squad from the 3-2 Premier League loss to Brentford, keeping only left-back Milos Kerkez in the starting lineup. His youthful side featured three teenagers \u2014 Rio Ngumoha, Trey Nyoni, and Kieran Morrison \u2014 with both Freddie Woodman and Morrison making their Liverpool debuts.<\/p>\n
However, it was Palace who thrived in the torrential Merseyside rain, as Ismaila Sarr\u2019s first-half double gave them a two-goal cushion at the break. Despite flashes of quality from Federico Chiesa, Liverpool managed just one shot on target from eight attempts, while the visitors hit the target eight times.<\/p>\n
The night worsened for the Reds when 18-year-old defender Amara Nallo was sent off in the 79th minute for bringing down Justin Devenny on a clear goal-scoring chance. Remarkably, it was Nallo\u2019s second red card in as many Liverpool appearances, both coming within a combined 16 minutes of play after he was also dismissed on his debut in last season\u2019s Champions League group stage against PSV. Yeremy Pino then sealed a 3-0 win for Palace late on.<\/p>\n
Understandably, Nallo was devastated, but Slot praised the leadership of Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate, who immediately stepped in to comfort the youngster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t need to say much to Nallo,\u201d Slot said after the match. \u201cIbou and Virgil went straight to him to talk. That tells me they are great human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool will look to bounce back when they face Aston Villa in the Premier League on Saturday, before crucial fixtures against Real Madrid and Manchester City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot has revealed that Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk made a heartfelt gesture during the team\u2019s 3-0 Carabao Cup fourth-round defeat to Crystal Palace. Slot heavily rotated his squad from the 3-2 Premier League loss to Brentford, keeping only left-back Milos Kerkez in the starting lineup. His youthful side featured three teenagers \u2014 Rio …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":53252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/resize-7-1.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53253,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53251\/revisions\/53253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}