Never forget that Man Utd picked Victor Lindelof over Virgil van Dijk

Virgil van Dijk is an absolute Rolls Royce of a defender.

Make no mistake that Liverpool‘s charge towards an unprecedented quadruple has been in no small part down to the fact that they have the world’s best centre-back in the heart of their defence again.

While the Reds are still a world-class team without Van Dijk in their starting XI, there’s no denying that his absence from the majority of last season with an ACL injury cost them dearly.

However, now that he’s back and playing week in, week out, Liverpool fans have been given an emphatic reminder as to why they paid £75 million for his services back in the 2017/18 season.

At the time, the fee that the Reds paid to Southampton raised eyebrows amongst football fans: Van Dijk was clearly a top defender, but did he really warrant a world-record price tag for the position?

Many supporters thought the answer to that was ‘no’, but that couldn’t be further from the case now that Van Dijk has Premier League and Champions League trophies sitting on his mantelpiece.

Chuck in UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup and Carabao Cup wins, as well as a second-place finish in the Ballon d’Or, to see that it was very much money well spent from the Merseyside club.

And to think, things could have been so different because it’s easy to forget that Van Dijk was actually heavily linked with a move away from Southampton in the summer before he eventually did leave.

In fact, there were more Premier League clubs than Liverpool who were linked with the Dutchman, including none other than the Reds’ north-west rivals: Manchester United.

The idea of Van Dijk sporting a red devil on his chest seems pretty mind-blowing now, but there’s good reason to believe that it wasn’t an impossible proposition