Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk believes that with VAR, there should be no need for players to fall down if they want a penalty.

The Reds were denied a spot-kick in Sunday's defeat by Arsenal when Alexander Isak had his shirt pulled by Jurrien Timber in the box but VAR chose not to intervene. After the game, Andoni Iraola said he would tell his players to go down in future.

Asked if Isak should have made more of the shirt pull, Van Dijk said: "There are so many angles and cameras, and we are using VAR, so why should you make an extra theatrical move?"

Van Dijk added that Liverpool will continue to play out from the back despite Alisson's error leading to Kai Havertz scoring the only goal of the game.

"I don't have the goal exactly in my mind and what went wrong but I think we tried to play out from the back, which we have to keep doing and keep encouraging each other to do. We have the quality," he said.

"But it was also a very good cross and we could have definitely done things better, but we conceded a goal. After that, we have to react and I think we reacted well.

"We obviously troubled the champions but we played at home, and we wanted to win. We had opportunities to score but, in the end, we came away with nothing. That is frustrating and we are all disappointed."

Liverpool's two losses this season have come against Manchester City and Arsenal and Van Dijk insisted that his side are still going through a transition under Iraola.

"We have to just focus on ourselves. I don't think it is good to think about the other two and even Brighton. We are in a process," he said.

"We have been together now for four months but we play at Liverpool and we want results every three days, especially at home. The main thing is we keep working very hard and that we see improvement, but the fact of the matter is we are in a transition."

"It is still a work in progress. We are training a lot but eventually it is about doing it in the games. There was a lot of good things, by the way, but you need results and we didn't get the result that we wanted," he added.

Iraola's side travel to Istanbul on Tuesday before facing Turkish side Fenerbahce in the Champions League on Wednesday (17:45 GMT).