Jamie Carragher claims Virgil Van Dijk is ‘far better’ than Manchester United greats

Jamie Carragher has claimed that no other defender has had an impact on a team to the same extent as Virgil Van Dijk at Liverpool in the history or the Premier League.

His comments come as Van Dijk has come under fire from some quarters following a dip in form that has coincided with The Reds’ stuggles this season.

The Dutchman signed for Liverpool in the January transfer window in 2018 for a hefty fee of £75m fee and has been integral to their Premier League and Champions League successes.

The Netherlands defender, who has won every trophy available to him at club level, has been widely considered as the best centre-back in the world during his peak years at Liverpool, earning individual accolades as the Premier League Player of the Year, featuring in the UEFA Team of the Year for three consecutive seasons as well as finishing second in the Ballon d’Or to Lionel Messi in 2019, but his form this season has been a farcry from those heights.

Liverpool’s season has been underwhelming and Van Dijk has struggled in different periods across the season, as fans have been quick to disregard his status amongst the elite in Premier League history.

Carragher took to Twitter this morning to defend the 31-year-old, placing him right in amongst the elite defenders in Premier League history as he replied to a tweet that claimed that the former Southampton defender’s drop-off in form has been ‘insane’.

Carragher picked out the likes of Manchester United’s five-time Premier League winner Nemanja Vidić and the Serbians fellow Champions League winner Rio Ferdinand for comparison.

“VVD is far better than Vidic, who was a top CB, but have you forgot his performances against Torres? Rio & JT had poor seasons in their career like all players, VVD is having one now. No CB in the PL era has ever had VVD’s impact on a team.”

He went onto add: “Never mind the best CB in the league, he’s been the best player in the league along with KDB for four years before this one. We have never spoken about about other CB’s being the best player before, that shows the level he was at.”

Fans were quick to respond to his reply, which has gone onto reach nearly five million views on the social media platform, with one punter simply naming Carragher a ‘wind-up merchant’.

Whilst another pointed out that Vidic was a two-time Premier League Player of the Season winner (2008/09 & 2010/11) calling Carragher’s claims ‘factually inaccurate revisionism’.

Considering that Fernando Torres only scored three goals in 15 games against Manchester United, perhaps the Sky Sports pundit has been naive in his thinking, but there’s clearly no doubting Van Dijk’s quality or disputing his peak levels of performance under Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool over the years.