Virgil van Dijk on the progress that Liverpool has made under Andoni Iraola so far, ensuring that standards remain high, and the penalty that Alexander Isak was denied

Virgil van Dijk says Liverpool remains a "work in progress" under Andoni Iraola with the Reds having won five games on the spin in between being beaten by Manchester City and Arsenal.

Those two defeats at Anfield, in which Liverpool failed to score a goal, perhaps point to the stage of development that Iraola's men currently find themselves in — on track for a Champions League finish, but not quite ready for a Premier League title charge.

"We have to just focus on ourselves," Van Dijk insisted in a chat with reporters. "I don't think it is good to think about the other two and even Brighton. We have to focus on ourselves and we are in a process.

"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 matter of fact is we are in a transition. (The Arsenal game) was a great opportunity to get a good result, but unfortunately it didn't happen, so we have to take it.

"I think we should not lower our standards. 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."

Having gone a goal ahead, Arsenal was able to restrict Liverpool to very few chances. David Raya was well protected by the strong defense in front of him, with Van Dijk noting that goalscorer Kai Havertz was sometimes in the position you might expect to find a defensive midfielder.

"We can see in the first half that I was going to press Martin Odegaard and he was never going to get the ball," the Dutchman continued. "The outlet for them was a long ball to Noni Madueke against Milos (Kerkez) and then play the second ball from there.

"That is what teams are going to try and do, and we prepared for it. That's how the games are now being played — finding a situation where you can hurt the opponent and we try to do that and opponents try to do that as well.

"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."

Against Arsenal, while Liverpool was unable to register a shot on target, it should have been awarded a penalty kick when Alexander Isak was dragged back by Jurrien Timber.

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While Gary Neville claimed that Isak should have made more of the challenge, Jamie Carragher and Ian Wright insisted that with so many cameras in the stadium and VAR in place, the Swede shouldn't have had to.

Van Dijk, who said it was a "clear penalty", was in agreement that Isak shouldn't need to exaggerate the contact, with Dominik Szoboszlai also suggesting that Liverpool is not the kind of team to do that.

"I had that question after the game as well," Van Dijk said. "I feel like I don't think it should be like that, because there are so many angles and cameras, and we are using VAR, so why should you make an extra theatrical move?

"Because there are so many eyes on the game, but in the end, we can say what we want. They won 1-0 and we have no points. It could have been different."