Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk out for more than a month with injury

Liv­er­pool defend­er Vir­gil van Dijk will be out “more than a month” with a ham­string injury, man­ag­er Jur­gen Klopp announced on Friday.

Van Dijk was sub­sti­tut­ed at half-time fol­low­ing an injury in Liv­er­pool’s 3–1 defeat to Brent­ford on Monday.

“Vergil” was a sur­prise for us. It hurt a lot,” added Klopp at Fri­day’s press conference.

“He was­n’t feel­ing very well, because it was­n’t clear that maybe he want­ed to con­tin­ue [play­ing]. The diag­no­sis was pret­ty grim. A few weeks, a month. That’s all there is to say, but I hope it ends soon.

”Every­thing is going well for the team, but it is dif­fi­cult for Vir­gil. He has played an incred­i­ble amount of games over the years. .

Mean­while, Liv­er­pool enjoyed new sign­ing Cody Gakpo and Klopp said he was impressed with the winger in his first few days of training.

He’s good in tight spaces, likes to shoot from dis­tance and is a good fin­ish­er and drib­bler,” Klopp said.

If you want to know “him”, you can find it because there are many videos about him. It’s nice to be able to see it in real life. ”

“He looks very promis­ing and healthy. It’s intense for him because the ses­sions are dif­fer­ent. I think very pos­i­tive­ly about him. It’s always dif­fi­cult com­ing from a new league, but We expect a pos­i­tive impact.”

Liv­er­pool are sixth in the Pre­mier League, sev­en points behind fourth-placed Man­ches­ter United.

Klopp wel­comes Wolves in the FA Cup third round on Sat­ur­day and Brighton in the Pre­mier League next weekend.

“There were times when it was easy to sign for Liv­er­pool,” said Klopp.

“I can’t guar­an­tee a place in the Cham­pi­ons League this year, but Cody nev­er asked for it. He knew the deci­sion. He can see the board. He jumps on a mov­ing train. Instead, he’s the one who wants to push the train, and that always helps.”