With quotes from Virgil van Dijk being shared widely on social media, we have heard what the Liverpool captain actually said about the reasons for Liverpool’s “tough season.”Against Chelsea, Liverpool suffered a third consecutive defeat for the first time under Arne Slot, leading Van Dijk to reflect on the team’s dip in form.Since full time, quotes have been shared on social media in which Van Dijk references Diogo Jota‘s passing as a reason for the Reds having a difficult campaign.While this is an entirely understandable reason for individuals to be impacted, we thought it best to share what Van Dijk said in full on the subject.Van Dijk told ViaPlay: “It was always going to be a tough season, I’ve mentioned. Nobody said that it was going to be plain sailing whatsoever.“It was always going to be ups and downs for multiple reasons that we shouldn’t forget, and all we have to do is stick together.“It’s been a tough week. A tough 10 days or something like that, more or less, but we know that the only way to get out of this is sticking together, keep working and yeah, onto the next one.“But obviously first we’ve got internationals and then we focus on a very big one at Anfield.”The death of a teammate is a completely valid cause for your mentality affected at times, but it isn’t the entire reason for Liverpool’s poor performances – and Van Dijk hasn’t tried to suggest this.We should all do well to remember not to criticise individuals too harshly in public, given what they have been through.And while it doesn’t exonerate complaints about Liverpool’s performances, Jota’s death is something to consider when judging the players this season. One grievance levelled at Liverpool from some quarters has been their naivety in giving away late goals in two consecutive league matches, surrendering two points in the process.Some would say Liverpool should have settled for a draw, but Van Dijk said: “I think we’re always going to play and try and win the game.“You say in the end we play with two midfielders in the last lines (Dominik Szoboszlai and Ryan Gravenberch) so we try everything and that’s how we always do it, and obviously if we are up we try to defend the lead.“If it’s a draw like today at a certain point, we try to score the winner.“I felt like it could have gone both ways. It was wide open at times and that’s obviously for the neutral, it’s quite nice to see, but obviously for us it’s disappointing that we lost so work to do.“But stick together, stick together no matter what. And that’s how we’ve always been doing with Liverpool, and we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs and that’s the only way to stick together.”