The Reds travelled to Stamford Bridge for a first Premier League fixture since they clinched the title with four games to spare a week earlier.

Arne Slot’s side slipped to just a third top-flight defeat of the campaign after Enzo Fernandez scored early on and Jarell Quansah conceded an unfortunate own goal when Van Dijk’s attempted clearance struck him and went in.

The Liverpool captain headed in a response from Alexis Mac Allister’s corner on 85 minutes but they were unable to level and Cole Palmer ended the scoring for the Blues with a penalty in added time.

Post-match, Van Dijk gave his verdict on the clash to Sky Sports. Read his reaction below…

I think the possession was quite good, but I think when we didn’t have the ball the pressing was not great and they could find the free man between the lines. Obviously to concede that early is not great, but we know that if we start playing the way we want to play and defend better that we create chances. There were chances for us as well to score. But I think in the end maybe they deserved the win and that’s a disappointing thing because we came here to win and we came here to keep playing the way we’re playing. Obviously we tried, but it wasn’t great.

No, I don’t think so. Everyone who became a football player wants to win games. That’s what I expect. The way we trained over the last couple of days, the sharpness that we had, everyone was ready for it. And it’s a big game – Sunday 4.30, playing against a very good team that obviously fights for being in the Champions League places. We knew it was going to be tough but I think at times we could have done better, especially in the way we defended as a team. But we have to take it, we will analyse it tomorrow and prepare for the next game on Sunday.

If you analyse them, they rotate a lot; obviously [Moises] Caicedo plays today as a right-back but obviously he’s a midfielder so he finds the half-spaces. They try to rotate a lot, which needs a lot of communication. You know there will be difficult moments, we all knew that and all are prepared for that. It’s how you sprint back and try to obviously avoid all of that but unfortunately it wasn’t enough.

Any defeat hurts. We are representing Liverpool everywhere we go. We are very fortunate and not lucky but blessed that we didn’t lose that many games, especially in the league, so this hurts. And it should hurt, in my opinion. Even when the job is done we came here to try to win the game and try to get a good result. Unfortunately, we didn’t. So, like I said, it has to hurt. We are all winners and I’m definitely disappointed.